Teacher
by romantiscue
Summary: Harry never wanted to be a teacher, especially not for a much too hyperactive neon-orange brat of a boy, but a favor promised is a favor kept. Features a quasi-super-but-reluctant!Harry and a motivated-but-not-super!Naruto.
1. Prologue

**Teacher**

_Prologue: How to tilt an unfavorable political situation your way_

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Sarutobi Hiruzen was a good leader, he knew. He cared honestly for his village, which was most probably what made him so good an Hokage, but on days like these – when the people of Konoha felt more like 'a people' than '_his_ people', he felt the difference between 'good' and 'great' so acutely it pained him.

Minato had been great – and perhaps Hiruzen had been as well, in his youth – but he had admittedly been far too unprepared to come out of retirement than what was arguably proper for a shinobi of his caliber.

The root of his newly reiterated self-doubts stemmed from where it always seemed to stem these days: the Council. The Council was only supposed to be a check on the Hokage's power, to ensure they didn't fall into corruption or lose sight of what was important for the village, rather than personal ambitions. And this was precisely what they had been under Minato's reign; the blond Hokage had used whirlwind tactics and basically stomped all over the self-important 'honorable' Council members haughty and ill-fitting propositions, and gotten away with it.

Sarutobi, in his youth, had done rather similarly, though perhaps with a touch more diplomacy. In any case, the Council had never openly defied his authority… and maybe they would never have, even in his reinstated reign, if not for one particular person.

Naruto. The young demon-carrier – whom he could honestly say that he loved like a grandson – had always been a sore point for the individual members of the Council. It was rather ironic how they seemed to have succumbed to the very thing they had been amassed to protect Konoha from: selfish ambitions.

Or perhaps they were simply blinded with hatred – it was a rather obvious possibility, considering the near rabid states of some Council members during the first few years after Kyuubi's imprisonment, whenever Naruto's name was mentioned.

Sarutobi sighed. He had had to fight for Naruto's right to an education, to a life outside a prison cell, and finally to allow him to enter into the academy. It had gone as well as could have been expected, Sarutobi supposed, which meant that though there hadn't been any obvious sabotage, there had been several questionable incidents in the beginning of Naruto's enrollment. They had since ceased, but the subtle, non-vocal shunning had continued… and there wasn't anything Sarutobi could do about it – not without enticing accusations of favoritism, something he couldn't afford if he wanted to keep Naruto alive and at least somewhat happy.

That the son of Minato had to live in a rundown apartment on the very edge of the village made his heart clench, even more so since he had been the one to sign off on the arrangement, since opposing it would merely elicit statements in the likes of 'but other people are inhabiting that apartment complex, so why would you be against this – boy – taking up residence there? Surely, if the apartment is inhabitable you would have had everyone move out, yes?' – Oh, he could hear their smug voices as they did what little they could to make Naruto's life miserable.

He did still have a grip on them though, and knew when compromises had to be made and when to forge ahead despite protests – he wasn't incompetent, just not as competent as he had once been.

Now though, the heart of his current troubles: Naruto's upcoming third graduation exam. Naruto had been a good – not the best, but not the worst, either - student when he first started the Academy, but as the teachers openly disparaged and discouraged him whenever he succeeded, he had started to skip classes and ignore his homework, and when Sarutobi finally received word on the verbal abuse Naruto went through in the Academy – surprisingly by the newly minted Chuunin and Kyuubi orphan Iruka, who had apparently warmed up enough to the then-six year old Naruto to pass the word to the Hokage.

Sarutobi had been very proud of his subordinate and very displeased with the Academy teachers – and had immediately made his displeasure felt. Some had seemingly taken his word to heart and began treating the young Vessel neutrally, while others had taken to treating him like air except when handing out assignments and such. It hadn't been ideal, but he hadn't been able to do more. Sadly, the damage had already been done, and young Naruto had gained a lackluster attitude towards the Academy – and the education it offered – and his grades had slipped to last place. Despite this he had tried graduating earlier – probably to get away from the Academy – but had, obviously, failed.

Now, a part of the Council were pushing – unjustly, of course – for the termination of Naruto's shinobi career. They 'reasoned' that since he had failed so spectacularly the first two times he had attempted the exam he obviously wasn't suited for shinobi life. A contorted excuse – because since when was someone dismissed because they had failed _early_ exams? The notion was ridiculous, but alas, it had gained unexpected support – and now he was stuck between rock and a hard place.

The more vocal Council members argued against Naruto's placement on a team, if he wasn't completely dismissed. They argued that he would drag any team he was a member of down. It was absolutely ridiculous – every year's Academy graduating class had 'dead lasts' and the Council had never attempted to stop them from learning teamwork!

He could go against their wishes – he had all the right to, since their arguments were flimsy and pathetic at best - everyone could see that - no matter the how some of them might pretend otherwise.

However… ignoring and bypassing them completely would only gain him enemies, and that wasn't something he wished to deal with at the moment. He wasn't afraid to wield the power he held over the village, but he didn't want to crush the free speech and force people act behind his back instead of to his face, like they did currently.

He wasn't the one who decided on the team sensei, but considering Naruto's class ranking, he was bound to be paired with Uchiha Sasuke – and with the Uchiha on the team, Hatake Kakashi would be the inevitable sensei. In all fairness, Uchiha Sasuke would need the one – available – Sharingan user alive to teach him how to use his doujutsu when he finally did activate it, but in Sarutobi's opinion he was not the best teacher for a team.

Especially not for a team that would consist of the Uchiha and his sensei's son. Sarutobi knew about Kakashi and Uchiha Obito, and suspected that Kakashi would probably focus on Sasuke more than anyone else in whatever team he was given, to honor his memory – not to disrespect his sensei, but because the old pains never faded, and whereas Uchiha Obito and Sasuke weren't similar in the least, Naruto looked a lot like his father.

Sarutobi knew Kakashi wasn't ready to face that on a daily basis.

And that was why he was currently staring at the letter laying innocuously on his desk. It was yellowed and slightly crimped at the edges, testament to its many re-readings since it was received. This letter was usually kept in one of the hidden drawers in his desk, locked behind powerful seals and the sender's own _wards_.

The sender of the letter was the only proof of contact Sarutobi had to Mahoutsukai no seken – or the _Wizarding world_, as it was called in _English_, the language of the Outer country known as _England_.

The Outer countries and the Hidden Countries had been separated by a barrier powered by both chakra and _magic_ for several centuries. Four _English wizards_, known to the Mahoutsukai as the four Founders had, together with the Sage of Six Paths, erected the barrier after the Last Great Demon War and separated the two worlds forever.

The story diverged largely beyond the point of 'there is a great barrier that protects us from another dimension, which was created after the Demon War'- this, both sides agreed on, but since the _wizards_ knew nothing of chakra, and shinobi knew nothing of _magic_, the rest of the story had been lost to both sides… until the arrival of one _Potter Harry_.

The wizard's arrival had been very abrupt, and both Sarutobi and Harry-san had been suspicious of the other, which had led to a rather violent confrontation. It had been a wake-up call for both of them; the other had used techniques they had never thought possible!

It had been a rather quick fight, because of the mutual surprise but mostly because they had soon realized that the other wasn't an enemy. Thing had snowballed from there, until they had found that Harry had actually crossed the barrier. They had cross-referenced their versions of the creation of the barrier, and had come up with something like this:

Around a thousand years ago, before the Last Great Demon War, the now-Hidden Countries _ninja_ (the _English_ word for a people that by their description, sounded somewhat similar to what the modern shinobi were) and the Outer countries _wizards_ had been a semi-united people. They had all been as hidden from the _muggles_ as the modern wizards were, and had lived in the same general areas.

But then, after the Demon War, there had been some kind of great conflict between the Mahutsukai and the _ninja_ – there was no information on what had actually happened – and they had mutually decided to split their societies, feeling that their differences were inconsolable. The Sage and the Founders had done the deed, and it was decreed to never speak of the time Before. The truthful account on how the barrier came to be, and under whose power, was forgotten.

Sarutobi had spoken to Harry about how the Sage was said to have created the first ninjutsu and become the first shinobi, and how the shinobi world and later the Hidden Villages had sprouted up around his teachings. In turn Harry had told him about the Mahoutsukai and how their culture had evolved, and what had happened with the _muggles_.

It had been the talk of a lifetime. Harry had been 15 years old and with eyes as old as any shinobi – despite the fact that wizards were mostly civilians, the secrecy they kept notwithstanding – he had spoken of the recently ended Mahoutsukai war - and managed to horrify Sarutobi with his tales of _Dark Creature_ and _Inferi_ armies and of the leader of the _Death Eaters_,_ Voldemort_. It had sounded a lot like how he had imagined the Demon War must have been, and Voldemort's ambitions and the tactics he employed to reach them hit a little too close to home.

Sarutobi had invited Harry to stay in Konoha, but the latter had declined, stating that he wanted to help _England_ rebuild itself before he even considered moving anywhere. Sarutobi understood that thought completely and gave Harry a standing invitation to Konoha, should he ever need it. From what he had seen of the teen's fighting skills, Konoha would benefit greatly from it. Harry had, in turn, given him a letter stating that should he ever return to the Hidden Countires, he wouldn't ally himself with any other village, provided Konoha did nothing to force his hand.

That had been three years ago.

Harry had taken up Sarutobi's offer four months ago and had moved to the edge of one of Konoha's civilian sectors. Sarutobi had been surprised by how quickly the repairs – both physical and social - in _England_ had been completed until Harry explained the different _spells_ the Mahoutsukai used, that had nothing to do with fighting - it had been very fascinating to the Professor, and he knew that he was still only scraping the surface.

He had been disappointed that Harry hadn't wanted to become a shinobi, but hadn't been willing to try and persuade him otherwise. Not when the young man was still so torn up about his losses. He had started setting up a shop, though, which – though as of yet unopened – was truly one of its kind.

The shop was connected to what Harry called the _Floo_ network – some kind of fire travelling system that Sarutobi was trying to convince Harry to set up around Konoha. He hadn't agreed yet, saying that fire travel was risky for those without _magic_, and that he would have to experiment with the _Rune_ formula before he even made an attempt. The fire network of Konoha would also have to be separate from the one that the _wizards_ used, since neither Harry nor Sarutobi wanted shinobi falling into the _Wizarding_ world.

The shop was also heavily _warded_ – at least Harry said it was; Sarutobi couldn't feel the _wards_, but he had no reason to doubt the young _wizard_. According to Harry, those with bloodline doujutsus _might_ be able to see either lines or a vague shimmer over the shops walls, though he wasn't sure.

The shop's interior was simple; around the walls were bookcases with different objects on display. None were overtly _magical_, but Sarutobi had seen examples of what some of them could do. He had already been gifted with _Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder_ and a _bezoar_. Several of the other objects Harry had spoken of had also piqued his interest.

Sarutobi wanted to order a multitude of things to the hospital, but since it was illegal for Harry to export a mass of _magical_ objects to one place, and the objects he could permissibly export were very expensive, only a few _bezoars_ would be available to the higher-ups at the hospital. It might not have been as much as he wished for, but it was still more than he could have hoped.

Harry also had several interesting weapons on display. Though most of the larger weapons were packed into the boxes that were strewn across the floor – the shop being in a state of 'half-unpacked', since new items kept arriving constantly – there were several jewel-adorned differently sized knives in the back of the shop. The weapons were seated behind a _warded_ display window, since they were all very _particular_ weapons and shouldn't be lying out in the open.

Sarutobi wasn't sure when Harry was going to open the shop, or if he wanted Sarutobi to recommend it to anyone. He had been entertaining an idea about making a deal with Harry, though he was unsure if the young man would accept it; Since he didn't want _magical_ weapons in the hands of Danzo's people, perhaps Harry would agree to sell them only with the Hokage's recommendation?

'_Either way_,' Sarutobi mused as he retrieved his hat and stepped out of the office for the day, '_I might __as well ask.'_

Since he was on his way to ask the young man for a favor, he could bring up the subject as an inroad to other things.

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**A/N:** Eh, I started working on this quite some time ago, and I figured I could post the prologue to see if it would interest anyone. Tell me what you thought?

Reviews are motivation!


	2. A Manipulating Old Coot

**Teacher**

_Chapter 2: A Manipulating Old Coot_

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Harry carried the small box, containing Remembralls, from his personal apartment behind the shop and put it on one of the lower shelves at the front of the would-be shop. He had spent most of the day unpacking things, and the shop was beginning to fill pleasantly with items of different sizes and colors. It felt nostalgic, like being in a shop in Diagon Alley and filled him with bittersweet longing for his younger days, before the Alley had been destroyed.

He had made himself a rather good home here in Konoha, something he couldn't even imagine when the Hokage had made the original offer. He had been so wrapped up in all the deaths and the aftermath of the war that he'd been blind to whatever future would come after everything was finished.

He didn't want to be shinobi - which was what Harry knew Sarutobi-sama wanted him to become, though the Hokage hadn't pressured him to comply with his wishes. A small shop at the edge of two sectors with little daily traffic was more than he could have hoped for in England. Being a war hero meant never being left alone in public unless he went to the muggle world, where he never really fit in anyway.

It had been a lose-lose situation with Harry practically tearing his hair out in frustration, and Hermione had finally suggested he take up Sarutobi-sama on his offer and move here to get some peace. Ron had agreed, because since they would always be connected by Floo, Harry could come over to visit whenever he wanted to anyway.

And so, Harry had moved. It had taken several months for him to even begin to feel like this was his home, and not just another 'living space', but he was getting there. He'd found amicable acquaintances in an elderly couple – his closest neighbors – who had moved into their house from one of Fire Country's smaller towns a few months before his arrival. They had shown him around and introduced him to different vendors in the neighborhood, occasionally inviting him to dinner as well, channeling Mrs. Weasley's intentions to 'fatten him up'.

Before the pressure of his fame had become too much, Harry had worked as an Unspeakable for the Department of Mysteries. Unspeakable trainees had to go through serious martial arts training, since relying only on your magical prowess could get you killed if you didn't have the stamina and agility to keep up with it. There were many different kinds of martial art forms developed especially for wizards, by wizards from the Orient.

Harry had chosen a form called Raien: Tekigou no Se. It was a team-support style that relied almost solely on speed and agility, designed to adapt to whomever you were teamed up with. It required acute situational awareness and recognition of how your partner would move before they actually did. The Se did work for a lone individual, but it was a lot more effective when coupled with someone else's - preferably power-based – style. As a stand-alone form it was made for assassinations and invisible killings or disabling your opponent without their notice.

There were a few drawbacks with the Se, however. The first was that since the style was all about being in constant motion, flowing around and above both your opponent and your partner, it lacked much actual power. It was made for striking out with spells or small weapons and in a team, to distract and disable the opponent enough for the other members of the team to take them out. Harry's muscle definition showed this clearly. He was lithe and very light and could easily be mistaken for a civilian by the casual observer.

The second drawback was that you had to suppress your presence constantly while using it, because it was otherwise just as visible as any other martial art, and thus lost a lot of its usefulness. Presence could only be suppressed when the user wasn't casting spells, which meant that you had to be able to freeze for less than half a second while attacking without inconveniencing your partner or allowing the enemy to get to you, and then pull your presence back in.

Harry was currently one of the best wielders of the Se, but getting to where he was had taken a lot of experience and many mistakes written in heavy scarring all over his body. He and Ron – who was now an Auror, but who had went through Unspeakable training with Harry and Hermione just because he could – often fought together in the war, with Ron acting the powerhouse.

The redhead's chosen style, Ryoku no Hanran, was the counterpart to the Se and enabled Harry and Ron to fight like two halves of each other. Even Hermione, who was strictly a researcher and loathed fighting with a passion, admitted that watching the two fight together was quite amazing. _It's l__ike a dance,_ she'd commented after a sparring session against another pair of Unspeakables.

Harry didn't really like fighting – having done too much of it in the war – but there was something very relaxing about losing yourself in the katas, allowing your body to work on autopilot, and he hadn't been willing to give that up even after the war ended and he no longer needed it just to survive.

Harry snapped out of his memories when a knock sounded at the door. He wound his way around the discarded boxes covering the floor and opened the door, carelessly wondering who he would find on the other side.

The aging Hokage looked back at him, pipe in place and smoke curling around a small smile that stretched the wrinkles on his face. Harry stepped back a few paces to allow him in, greeting him courteously and receiving a larger smile and a nod in return.

Harry led the way to the table in the back of the shop, waving the arm that held his concealed wand over the stacks of books that covered the surface. He watched them fly to the closest shelf in no particular order and sighed inwardly. He'd have to arrange them more carefully later.

Turning back to the Hokage, he smiled when he saw the elderly man's eye glued to the now filled bookshelf. He could sympathize with the fascination for magic even though he'd lost most of that fascination years ago. Smiling, Harry summoned the teapot he had had boiling in the kitchen to the table, along with two cups.

They sat down opposite each other and Harry poured the cups to the brim, drawing in a satisfied breath at the smell of the fresh green tea. Like always when Sarutobi-sama came to visit, they spent the first few minutes in silence. After that, usually either Harry or Sarutobi would start up the conversation, often with a question they had about the other's respective home. The Hokage seemed to have an endless fascination with the theories behind different spells and they would exchange information and debate casually about the validity of one theory or other.

"Harry-san, I have a favor to ask of you." Sarutobi-sama began, startling Harry out of his daydreaming. That sentence sounded rather ominous to Harry's ears, though externally he only tilted his head a little to show that he was listening. He owed the Hokage a lot for his generosity, and he would strive to repay him in kind to the best of his abilities.

Harry listened alertly to Sarutobi's explanation about not wanting the special weapons to end up in the wrong hands and quickly agreed to the Hokage's suggestion that whoever wanted to buy one would have to go through him first. It wasn't even a choice to think about, really. The Hokage was the leader of Konoha – and a good acquaintance – so it was only right that he should choose who would be allowed to carry what weapons in his village.

Harry narrowed his eyes at the Hokage when the other didn't start up the conversation again after settling the issue. With perception he asked, "That's not the favor you meant?"

The Hokage paused for a moment, seemingly surprised, before shaking his head. He pursed his lips in apparent deep thought and absently swirled the tea in his cup. Harry said nothing, merely watching and waiting for the other to make up his mind.

"There is a boy... Naruto, who will be graduating the Academy soon…" Sarutobi began, sounding like he was choosing his words with great care. "For… various reasons, he is not very well-liked by some of the members of the Konoha Council. They have been quite insistent that I should not place him on a team..."

Harry waited for the punch-line with some apprehensiveness. Information about why this Naruto kid was disliked was suspiciously lacking, and missing information was always dangerous. He had a feeling he wouldn't like whatever this favor was about.

"I would like you to take him as your apprentice, Harry-san," the Hokage said abruptly, and just as abruptly Harry spat out his mouthful of tea. He spent a few moments coughing and looked up at the Hokage, who smiling oh-so-serenely, with clear disbelief.

"What? Why?" He asked incredulously when the seconds passed without any elaboration from the old man. His mind was buzzing with thoughts and possible explanations. At the front was the thought that maybe this was a ploy to get him to become a shinobi, though it seemed a bit too underhanded for the amicable Sarutobi.

"Because while I would enjoy simply ignoring the idiotic ingrates so bent on causing Naruto misery, I cannot afford to obviously pitch myself against them." Sarutobi sounded pained, and Harry immediately understood. With a snap of his wrist, the spilled tea disappeared.

"Ah, politics." _The bane of all existence,_ was left unsaid, but from the elderly man's tired smile, Harry had a feeling the implied message was heard clear as day. Harry watched the Hokage watching him. The man really did look tired and weary – and Harry understood his plight. He had led before and had had more trouble with politics than should arguably be allowed. It was a miracle he was still sane- well, mostly sane, anyway.

"I'm not shinobi, you realize. To teach a… ah, _genin_, wouldn't I need to have to have some kind of merits as a shinobi?" He began cautiously. He would help, because he owed the old man and because he understood how politics could get in the way of ethics, but that didn't mean he was prepared to jump the broom just yet. He wanted all the facts first.

The Hokage took a small sip, looking satisfied. Harry suspected that he knew Harry was all but convinced already.

"Potter Harry-san, I hereby officially promote you from civilian to Tokubetsu Jounin. May you hold your new rank with responsibility."

Harry stared in shock and then glared at the man heatedly. Sarutobi just smiled – though he looked perhaps a tad guilty – and Harry narrowed his eyes. He didn't think the Hokage meant to manipulate him exactly, but he didn't like feeling coerced into doing things he didn't want to – he would not go through that again.

"And that means what, precisely?" Harry bit out, and Sarutobi's smile turned placating, perhaps realizing that he'd misstepped.

"A Tokubetsu Jounin is someone who has gained Jounin level skill in a particular area. While this is not entirely accurate in your case, I'd like you to focus on teaching Naruto taijutsu – martial arts."

"Only… _taijutsu_?" Harry asked with surprise, some of his ire fading. It didn't sound too troublesome, but when something seemed too good to be true, there was almost always some kind of catch.

"Yes. Naruto is ranked last in his class, so I would like you to completely overhaul the Academy taijutsu he has learnt and instead teach him your own style." Sarutobi's explanation made sense, in theory, but in practice…

"…you do remember that the _Tekigou no Se_ is made to be almost completely without power, and isn't originally supposed to be used by a single individual?" Harry reminded him slowly, wondering what the Hokage was up to. Did he want the kid to act only as support?

"Do you recall what I told you about the Kage bunshin no jutsu?"

Harry blinked at the apparent non-sequitor and raised an eyebrow. "Yes, it's a forbidden technique that makes solid clones…" He answered slowly. As he spoke, he started connection the dots and upon reaching the conclusion, raised the other eyebrow as well.

"You mean to teach him such a dangerous technique just so he can act as his own support?" It was a pretty interesting idea, Harry admitted, but it didn't quite make sense, since having a slew of clones that only knew support wouldn't work very well together.

"Well, to act as his own support, he would first need to know the Tekigou no Se… and after that, he may be able to learn another technique to compliment it. Either way, in time he would be able to support any team in need, yes?"

"Theoretically, yes. Is he geared for speed then?" Harry asked dubiously, feeling vaguely dissatisfied with the Hokage's plan. It took years to learn how to fight with _Se_ properly. There was almost a thousand basic katas he would need, and if the kid had the attention span of a typical twelve year old… _geh_.

"No, he's most definitely built for strength," Sarutobi answered promptly, looking a little amused at Harry's annoyed glare.

"Geh." Harry stated his previous thoughts succinctly, sighing a little. He spent a minute in deep thought, tracing circles on the table surface, before he looked up and rolled his eyes.

"I'll teach him the Ryoku no Hanran first. It's the companion style, and it's for powerhouses - I know it well since my best friend uses it. If he manages to learn the basics of both Hanran and Se, I'll teach him to actually fight with the styles."

Sarutobi looked relieved at his agreement, near invisible tension disappearing from his carriage. Harry felt a little guilty at what he was about to add, but since these were his conditions…

"He has to want to learn. I won't waste time on an unwilling student, Sarutobi-sama."

Sarutobi nodded, looking thoughtful. They finished the tea in silence and when the Hokage rose up to leave, Harry couldn't help but ask;

"I thought it was illegal for anyone to learn the techniques in the Forbidden Scroll? How are you going to teach the Kage bunshin to the kid without anyone understanding how he must have learned it? Won't those Council people be upset when they hear of it?"

Sarutobi smiled secretively around his pipe and answered, "I'll accidentally mention the scroll to a traitor."

He stepped out the door with Harry staring in confusion at his back, wondering what ace the Hokage had up his sleeve.

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**A/N:** Your reviews were greatly motivating, though I do believe I missed answering a few of them. To the few who received no reply, and to the anonymous reviewers; I apologize. Being as I have several stories going, it's inevitable that I miss a review every now and again.

Someone asked me something I believe other readers might also like to know, so I figured I might as well share it here:

The Floo in my fic works by anchoring the fireplaces to certain locations with seals and anchor stones, and since it's a form of teleporting tied to the land, it bypasses the barrier. To set up the Floo, you need at least one person on both sides of the barrier, though.

The magical world limits the quantity that can be bought of a certain object, and things that could be potentially harmful or lethal (objects or ingredients) are stringently restricted by way of recording the wand of the person who bought it... unless it's bought from the black market. I'm working with the assumption that the magical world is competent; a lot more so after the war, with the new minister and all.

Also, the reason all words pertaining to the magical world are in _italics_ from Sarutobi's POV is because they're words in a language he doesn't speak.

If you have any questions not related to the plot, don't hesitate to ask. If you notice any spelling- or grammatical errors, I would thank you to point them out to me.

Thank you for reviewing!


	3. Headband

**Teacher**

_Chapter 3: Headband_

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_

Naruto looked at Iruka in surprise and dawning wonder. With a shaking hand he reached up to trace the contours of the carved leaf.

'_I made it!'_ The thought slammed into his mind like that time he'd accidentally banged his head on the kitchen counter, except this time, instead of a pounding headache he got a warm feeling in his stomach.

He hopped up and hugged Iruka-sensei vehemently, momentarily forgetting about his teacher's injuries. At Iruka's pained groan, he jumped back and smiled apologetically, grin widening when his teacher returned it. It didn't deter his happiness much though, because he'd made it! He was a genin!

He had been more than shocked to hear about Kyuubi and what really happened the night the Yondaime supposedly killed him, but despite his original bout of despair, Iruka's belief in him had strengthened his resolve. He was going to become Hokage, stupid fox or no!

Iruka coughed wetly and Naruto frowned. That didn't sound good. "We need to get you to the hospital, Iruka-sensei!" He nodded determinedly, preparing to summon a few clones to help carry him, when he heard something land behind him. The sound was very faint, but he'd always had very good senses, so he picked up on it.

Had Mizuki-teme had an accomplice? Naruto spun around with a war cry on his lips, prepared to summon lots of clones instead of just a few. He was going to show them that nobody was allowed to lay another finger on Iruka-sensei!

He stopped mid-step at the sight of the old man, stumbling a little over his feet. Hokage-jiji was smiling at him softly, with that expression that always made Naruto flush a little. Laughing weakly, he scratched his head.

"Are you finally acknowledging my awesomeness and handing over that hat of yours?" he asked cheekily, though inwardly he felt kind of shaky. He had just stolen a scroll from the old man's tower, and if Mizuki-teme was a traitor, it was probably a pretty important one.

The old man laughed. "Not yet, I'm afraid. But if you keep apprehending traitors like this, you'll rise through the ranks in no time, I'm sure." Naruto grinned in both happiness at the praise and in relief. Oh, the old man would probably lecture him about this later, but he wasn't too mad at Naruto's screw-up.

"That said, you do realize that pulling a stunt like this has consequences?" The relief Naruto felt flew out the metaphorical window and he swallowed nervously. The Hokage still didn't look angry, but there was a new – worrying - tilt to his lips that hadn't been there just moments before.

Naruto nodded hesitantly, unsure of what to expect. Would the Hokage take his headband back? The thought made a lump form in his throat and he clenched his hands. He'd worked hard for this hitai-ate – _Iruka-sensei's_ hitai-ate – and he'd just found out about Kyuubi… to have the only positive thing about this whole day be snatched out of his hands would be really painful.

"Uzumaki Naruto," the Hokage began formally and Naruto straightened, valiantly ignoring the forming lump in his throat. "You are hereby promoted to genin -" a startled smile curled Naruto's lips, but the old man just continued in that severe voice, "- but as punishment for stealing the forbidden scroll, you will not be place on a genin team until you have proven yourself trustworthy."

Naruto didn't know what to feel. He wanted to be on a team – with Sakura-chan! - but even he could tell that the old man was being lenient. At the forefront of his mind was confusion; he didn't know how he'd be able to prove himself if he wouldn't be allowed on a team, but he didn't dare complain about that the way he usually would.

He looked up at the Hokage a little hesitantly, not knowing how to ask for more information politely. He rarely used manners or formalities of any kind, and that was something which this situation seemed to require.

"You will report to this address at 0800 hours tomorrow," the Hokage said and smiled slightly. He handed Naruto a note with an address that took Naruto a few seconds to place. He knew the street, if not the exact house, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. With how much he'd run about Konoha when he was younger – being chased by angry prank victims and such – he knew most of the streets like the back of his hand.

He nodded and the old man's smile widened, becoming reassuring, and Naruto felt a little bit better about the strange situation, even if he was still confused.

"There you will meet a young man, the one who might become your sensei." Naruto almost whooped before he took in the Hokage's wording. He frowned, scratching the back of his neck a little.

"'Might'?" Naruto looked up to see the old man's gaze sharpen and knew that whatever the Hokage was hinting at, it was important. He wasn't as stupid as most people thought he was, and reading body language was one of the things he had always been good at. He had a lot of experience with it, after all, trying to determine which shopkeepers might throw rotten tomatoes at him if he tried to buy from them or what stores he shouldn't even attempt getting into.

"Potter Harry-san is as of yet unsure whether he will agree to teach you or not." Naruto slumped a little at those words, a hand drifting to his stomach.

"Oh," he said, swallowing and trying to contain his disappointment. He understood why people hated him now, he really did, but that didn't mean he was going to just accept it. He wasn't the damn fox.

"The Kyuubi has nothing to do with it, Naruto-kun."

Naruto flinched at the damn fox's name and slanted a glance at the Hokage's face. He didn't like the sad look in the old man's eyes and shrugged his darker thoughts away, replacing them with a grin. A grin was like a shield, Naruto had always thought, like an armor you always carried with you.

"So what do I have'ta do to get him to train me?" he shouted, allowing real eagerness to swallow the darker thoughts completely. There was no way he was gonna let the fox bring him down, damn it, and this _Potteru_ guy – and what kind of name was that, anyway? - _would_ train him. Naruto would convince him!

"Show him that you want to learn," Sarutobi said, and at first Naruto wanted to shout about how stupid that was. Of course he wanted to learn! He was going to be Hokage, and a Hokage couldn't be weak!

Something in the old man's eyes stopped him, though. Naruto thought through the words as best he could. He wasn't the most perceptive of people, and finding hidden meanings and stuff like that in words always confused him. Why didn't people just say what they meant, instead of constantly speaking in codes?

Maybe this Potteru guy wasn't used to people wanting to learn things from him? Maybe he was some old man with a really boring voice...

"Even if he's boring, I'll still get him to train me! And then I'll become awesome! More awesome than I am now," he corrected, and Hokage-jiji blinked at him. Naruto didn't know why he'd be surprised though, 'cause the answer was really obvious if you thought about it.

The old Hokage smiled at him, shaking his head in that way that made Naruto feel that, though he might not have a complete family of his own, he did have a grandfather. It was a warming thought.

Naruto jumped up, a good feeling in his stomach, and danced up to the Hokage, grinning.

"Let's go have ramen!"

The old man smiled in that way he did sometimes, like he was indulging him and nodded. Naruto stopped abruptly, ashamed to realize he'd forgotten that one of his most precious people was laying hurt somewhere. He swiveled his head around, but couldn't find a trace of Iruka-sensei and that feeling rose in him, like a punch to the gut that made his legs and arms feel all unpleasantly tinging.

"Old man -" he turned back to Sarutobi, pointing uselessly at the last place he'd seen Iruka, just a few minutes ago. What if Mizuki had had a really sneaky accomplice, who had kidnapped Iruka to hurt him?

"Naruto, Iruka-sensei was taken to the hospital by ANBU," the old man answered calmly, looking completely unconcerned and maybe a little amused. Naruto flushed, tugging at his hair, and resisted glaring at the Hokage. The old man had been kind, not taking away his headband ans all, so it'd be a little too rude to glare now, wouldn't it?

Naruto glared at the old man anyway and Sarutobi's smile widened before he let out a deep laugh.

"Hmpf!" Naruto pointedly stared in another direction, deciding that he'd totally ignore the old man until he got his ramen. Then Naruto would forgive him for letting him think that Iruka-sensei might have been kidnapped and hurt and... it was better to stop there, Naruto knew. Sometimes images would pop up otherwise and they'd stick like glue in his thoughts for hours – sometimes days – afterward.

The Hokage turned around, starting to walk away and Naruto scrambled to follow, headband held tightly in hand.

* * *

**A/N:** Short chapter, I know. But next POV is Harry's, and it completely broke the flow when I tried to tack it onto this piece *sigh* Also, RL is kind of kicking my ass a bit at the moment D: To compensate, though, I'll try to get the next chapter out sooner than this one did. Sound fair?

Anyway, Naruto POV is really hard to write, because I want him to sound like what he is at this moment in time – a fairly uneducated, somewhat hyperactive, prepubescent boy - but I didn't want to make him a complete idiot. Geh.

Thank you, everyone who reviewed – it gives me motivation. I apologize for the reviews I might have I missed replying to.

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	4. Teacher & Prospective Student

**Teacher**

_Chapter 4: Teacher & Prospective Student_

_

* * *

_

It was a bright morning, with sunshine mercilessly pouring through the windows and birds chirping noisily. Harry groaned, rolling out of bed as gracefully as he could in his half-asleep state.

Hedwig hooted at him from her perch in the windowsill and Harry absently went to greet her. Clicking her beak at him, she seemed annoyed at how he wasn't truly paying attention her. He nodded at her apologetically when she slapped her wing against his wrist, admonishment clear in the gesture.

"I'm sorry, Hedwig, I just haven't had a very good night's sleep," he told her tiredly, rubbing his jaw absently. A simple charm took care of the stubble he hadn't bothered with yesterday, and he ran a hand through his hair, not even attempting to tame it. He usually wasn't one to dodge mission impossibles, but his hair was in another league.

"You heard what I agreed to yesterday," he grumbled when she twisted her head downwards to observe him. Harry thought he could see some exasperated amusement in her gaze and rolled his eyes.

He looked up at the clock on the wall, the one which had awoken him, and frowned when he realized the words _Time to get up_ was just under the numbers _5:30_. He usually never got up this early, and though the clock was charmed to wake him when it was needed, he felt no need whatsoever to arise at this time.

Harry glared at the clock and couldn't help but suspect this early awakening would have something to do with the student he'd been maneuvered to teach.

Not that there was much he could do about that now. He didn't make promises lightly, and he never went back on his word. It was really up to this Naruto kid to prove himself if he wanted Harry to teach him.

Ambling out into the kitchen after a quick shower, Harry proceeded to whip up breakfast in muggle fashion. He'd learned to enjoy cooking after getting away from the Dursley's, and though he was a far cry from a master chef, he was definitely no slouch in the kitchen either.

After putting the left-overs of his omelet in a stasis box, Harry redressed into his Unspeakable uniform; tight dragon hide trousers and a long-sleeved Acromantula silk shirt. They were both materials that followed the body's contours and allowed for maximum maneuverability, and to a certain extent also protected the wearer from fire and blunt force trauma.

Harry hadn't liked wearing them at first, but he'd gotten used to the fit when they'd proved their reputation for excellence in a fight against several dark wizards some time after the war ended.

The only real weapon he used besides his wand was a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife with an enchanted ruby attached to the hilt, allowing him to summon it from wherever it was, should he lose it. In addition to that, it was also equipped with runes for unbreakability and sharpness.

He'd have liked to charm it with further protections and enchantments, but a weapon as small as this particular dagger could only hold three differing charms effectively. Any more and he'd risk the knife breaking under the strain, or the charms destabilizing.

With a sticking charm, Harry attached it to his underarm and peered in the mirror. Frowning, he eyed the hitai-ate dangling from the frame. One of the Hokage's masked ANBU had dropped it off a few hours after the man left, but Harry wasn't entirely sure he wanted to wear it.

Sighing, he plucked it down, weighing it in his hand. Solid metal, attached to a long cloth. If he couldn't escape wearing it, there was no way he would wrap it around his head. That would feel like too much of a statement.

Slowly he cut the metal from the cloth, eying the stylized leaf with some apprehension. He was still loyal to Britain, at least when he was outside the Hidden Countries, and wasn't too keen on metaphorically slapping this symbol of loyalty over the coat of arms he wore for Britain's wizard community.

Finally he decided to pin it to the top of his thigh; the coat of arms was on his back, so the lower placement of the hitai-ate would be his personal way of showing that Britain was still where he belonged, even if nobody but he would recognize the gesture.

Harry slowly rubbed his neck, doing a final check-up to ensure that everything was in place, before he stretched out on the couch by the end of the wall. Unsure when his new student would arrive, he didn't have much to do until then.

He hadn't made any definite plans for today, since he figured it'd be better to get to know his student before setting some kind of curriculum. After that they'd start with the skeleton katas for the Hanran and see how dedicated a student this Naruto was.

He'd also need to check on the boy's knowledge of other important abilities utilized when one fought on a higher level, like tracking, subterfuge, strategy, infiltration and so on. Just being good at the fighting aspect didn't make one a skilled fighter, and the boy wouldn't come far if he only had the brawn going for him.

And he'd have to make sure not to use too much magic until he could judge the boy's trustworthiness. Well, children in general weren't very trustworthy, but he and his friends had been the closest-knit gang Harry had ever encountered. With shinobi being as team-oriented as they were – or as they were supposed to be, according to Sarutobi – he couldn't judge the boy yet.

Harry nearly jumped when the knock on the door came, no matter that he'd been expecting it. He'd almost fallen back asleep, and he usually didn't bother casting his senses outside his house when he'd already warded it.

Flicking his wrist as he rose from the couch, Harry flung the door open. It must have been due to his abrupt awakening that the flick caused the door to swing open so hard, because a blond haired boy fell inside, landing flat on his face.

Harry blinked at Naruto as the boy jumped up almost immediately, holding his nose and shouting incoherently.

He couldn't say his first impression of the boy was the very best.

"Naruto-kun?"

His voice interrupted the boy's grumbling, and the blond head snapped up to look at him. Harry's gaze met the bluest eyes he'd ever seen and then a sheepish smile graced the boy's face. The whisker-like scars trisecting his cheeks crinkled and Harry couldn't help but smile back a little. There was something very infectious about the blond's grin.

"Eheh, hello! I'm Uzumaki Naruto!"

The blond's voice was as loud as his grin and Harry held back a wince. He didn't know how genin hopefuls usually behaved, but he was pretty sure this wasn't the norm. He also had a feeling the boy would need to be taught the value of silence, or else end up causing him the most terrible headaches.

Stepping forward to offer the blond a hand, and noticed how Naruto's eyes widened at the gesture. That expression told a multitude of things that Harry unfortunately didn't have the time to contemplate at the moment. He suspected it had something to do with the council the Hokage had mentioned, and figured he might need to go and have a little chat with Sarutobi sometime soon.

"My name is Potter Harry," he introduced himself calmly, pulling Naruto up to stand. "And you must be my potential student, yes?" he asked rhetorically, but was answered by fervent nodding.

"I'm gonna be your student, just you wait!"

There was a lot of determination in the words, but Harry wasn't sure if he should be impressed by the boy's spirit or exasperated at the impertinent tone of voice. Maybe he should have had a little sympathy for Snape while the man was still alive; someone with the former Head of Slytherin's disposition managing to restrain himself from strangling obnoxious students was a miracle.

"Well, we'll see about that," Harry said noncommittally and was treated to an even more determined-looking twist to the boy's face. Ignoring that for the moment, he trailed his eyes along the boy's body, trying to get a feel for him with visuals alone.

Harry resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "What are you wearing?" he asked slowly, trying for an even tone.

Naruto brightened, grasping the hem of the impractical-looking sweater-thing he was proudly sporting. "Do you like it?"

"...It's orange." Harry felt the need to state the obvious, and did so in a very articulate tone of voice.

Naruto grinned, delighted. "Orange is _awesome_!"

"Orange isn't a very subtle color for shinobi," Harry again stated the obvious, this time making sure to look Naruto in the eye while drawing the words out as much as he could without it being too noticeable.

Naruto huffed, dropping the grin and narrowing his eyes. Crossing his arms defensively, he answered; "I know that. I'm not stupid, you know-" Harry barely resisted raising his eyebrows, not wanting the boy to feel like he was being looked down on, no matter how, well, _stupid_ he acted. "- but I've seen shinobi in the village with green jumpsuits, and the Hokage robes are white and red which isn't really _subtle_ either, and – and also, these clothes are cheap, and genin aren't supposed to go on any _cool_ missions anyway so why would I bother changing my clothes to more boring stuff yet?"

He looked up defiantly, clearly expecting some kind of rebuttal, but Harry leaned back thoughtfully. The boy's reasoning was a lot more sound than he'd expected it to be, and it was clear he spoke the truth about the other ninja's uniforms - Harry had seen the Hokage's robes many times, after all - even if a green _jumpsuit_ sounded like the most ridiculous kind of outfit _anyone_ could wear, let alone a shinobi.

And before taking Naruto on any missions - if the boy did indeed become his student - he would need to go through rigorous training, which wasn't something the boy would need new clothes for anyway. Katas were repetitive, and would wear the clothes out gradually anyway.

"Fair enough," Harry conceded, amused when the boy opened his mouth to argue before realizing that Harry had agreed and blinking a little in evident surprise.

"But should you become my student, you will wear what I tell you to when we're on a mission," Harry added, fighting back the urge to wince at his authoritative tone and wondering when he'd started channeling McGonagall. Usually, he wasn't too good at the whole stern-teacher thing, but since this was a dangerous world and his would-be student didn't look like the most discreet of children, perhaps it would be better to just spell things out for him. Or else it'd just make him more petulant whenever Harry did choose to be stern.

Naruto drew himself up, "So what do I hafta do to become your student?"

"I'm going to test your skills in different areas," Harry said calmly. The real trial wasn't so much how he'd do on the tests, but rather how far he'd be willing to go to have Harry teach him; how determined he'd be to succeed, how well he'd follow instructions, how much he'd complain and if he'd question Harry on things he didn't agree with. Not being interested in having a sycophantic follower, it was important to Harry that a student would know when _not_ to obey.

When to be a little Gryffindor.

* * *

**A/N:** And here is the next chapter. I'm sorry for not making it longer, but please don't ask me for/complain about that. I'm working on several stories at once, you know. Sorry for not answering all your reviews; I simply don't have the time. That said, I read and enjoy every single one, so thank you very much for you motivational support! :D

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	5. Tests of many kinds

**Teacher**

_Chapter 5: Tests of many kinds_

* * *

Harry sat back, glancing at the setting sun and then towards the boy on the ground. He'd been driving Naruto mercilessly for hours now, and it was a wonder the boy hadn't collapsed before this. He had more stamina than Harry had ever had; even more than Ron did.

"Giving up?" he inquired mildly, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. Naruto was only twelve, and shinobi-in-training or not, a boy his age doing this kind of exercises for long periods of time could cause microtraumatic damage to muscles and bones- especially if Naruto regularly underestimated his body's limits. He did seem like the kind of boy who would forget, or even refuse to acknowledge, that he even had limits unless someone reminded him of it.

"I'm gonna be the best shinobi! And then I'm gonna be Hokage!" Naruto shouted indignantly, as if the mere suggestion offended him, though he looked and sounded exhausted. If not for his eyes, which were burning, Harry would have said he was down and out.

"Really?" Cocking his head, Harry studied the panting boy curiously. That was a rather tall goal for someone with relatively abysmal skills in pretty much everything the Academy taught. That wasn't to say there wasn't untapped potential there, because the boy's sheer stamina was a large plus in his tally. "You want to lead?"

* * *

Naruto blinked, pausing in between his gulping breaths as he rose again. People usually didn't bother to ask him stuff about his dream to be Hokage. They mostly just laughed or told him it was impossible, except for Jiji and Iruka-sensei. This Harry guy was weird though, all thoughtful and hard to understand, so who knew what his motivations were?

Naruto didn't usually have trouble understanding people, because they almost always fell in the two base categories he measured strangers by; those who hated him and those who didn't. And it was pretty obvious that Harry didn't hate him, but Naruto wasn't sure if the guy liked him either. His eyes were hidden in that way most older shinobi's were.

It was strange thought, 'cause Harry didn't look old. He looked like he was in his late teens, like Ayame-neechan - except for his eyes. His eyes were a really strange green color, much glossier than Sakura-chan's dark forest eyes, but older and deeper and with an edge hidden inside that Naruto thought could be a blade if Harry wanted it to be.

Wondering if all higher ranked shinobi's eyes were like that or if it was just the jounin he'd bumped into so far, Naruto frowned. It'd be really hard to see what jounin were potential pranking victims and which people he could maybe befriend, if they didn't have intentions in their eyes when they looked at him.

But maybe it was just Harry, 'cause the man himself was more than a little weird. He didn't look like any shinobi Naruto had ever seen before. He wasn't wearing a jounin vest or a hip-pouch or the typical shinobi slacks, or even mesh, like Shikamaru wore.

Instead he dressed kind of like a civilian – or, not really, but more like a civilian than a shinobi anyway; pants made of some kind of creepy scaly material and a shirt that resembled the type of cloth he'd seen some nobles wear. Almost shimmery, it was so soft-looking.

In other words, Harry definitely shouldn't be telling him to get other clothes when the guy himself looked like he belonged in the Daimyo's court or something!

Naruto hadn't said that though, because he wasn't that stupid. Making the guy mad when he wanted Harry to train him – and when he couldn't categorize him properly – wouldn't be good for his shinobi career at all.

The first tests Harry put him through were paper-tests, and Naruto had felt his stomach sink when he'd realized that these were the kind of questions he'd never been able to answer in the Academy. There were three sheets with ten long questions each, all written in small squiggly script, and Naruto only managed to answer about a third. Most of the answers he wasn't sure of even as he wrote them down.

Who cared what alloy kunai was made of or what year the second Hokage defeated some long-dead guy? It didn't have anything to do with anything! He wasn't aiming to become a librarian, a historian or a blacksmith, so why did he need to know these unimportant facts he'd never have any use for?

He'd said as much to Harry when the guy was looking through the quizzes, but Harry hadn't said anything in reply, just looked at him placidly without any hint of agreement or disapproval or anything. It was completely infuriating - and the tiniest bit impressive too, since Naruto knew he wasn't very good at keeping his own opinions to himself.

Then they'd gotten to the physical part and Naruto had been determined to succeed and make up for his failure on the written test.

It hadn't been the kind of Academy-based exercises he'd been expecting, though. Instead Harry asked if he'd ever done yoga or something called _Tai Chi_, and when Naruto denied it, he'd been told to perform three easy-looking moves in slow motion.

This was where the first hint that Harry was a shinobi emerged. He'd performed the three movements with a casual grace Naruto knew he wouldn't be able to imitate. Yet, anyway. He didn't understand what was so important about this exercise, but since it was another test, he'd still do his best.

Even if it looked completely boring.

Again and again he stretched his arms and legs into the positions, moving as slowly as possible and trying not to lose patience with the repetitions. He hadn't thought this would be very difficult, but the longer he was at it, the harder it became to keep his movements solid and his arms from trembling.

Sweat dripped down his face and into his eyes, and Naruto blinked rapidly, trying to keep a scowl from forming on his face and his limbs from shaking. He chanced a look at Harry after he rose, but the guy still had that neutral unreadable expression on his face, and didn't look like he was planning to give him a break any time soon, despite asking that question and seeming interested.

His thoughts abruptly switched to another track as annoyance creased his brow. _Hmpf._ The guy probably thought Naruto would give up on his own if he just sat there, staring like an owl and acting entirely unhelpful. He could keep dreaming. Falling down happened regularly during Academy practice.

Naruto was used to having to prove himself, and he wouldn't be brought down by some guy he'd never even met before. Forcing himself into the first position again, he completely missed the fleeting smile that tilted Harry's lips for just a moment.

* * *

The boy was very tenacious, Harry would give him that. The stubbornness of a dog – or a Gryffindor. It was a good sign, and more than he'd expected from the clumsy child who'd tumbled through the door this morning. Perhaps this endeavor was doable, after all.

Naruto was rather... not outright stupid, but obviously action-oriented, forgetful and impatient. He'd have to train that out of the boy somehow, or at least teach him to keep his composure when necessary. Especially considering the dream he apparently burned for- being a leader was not easy even at the best of times. Naruto had become lost in thought, completely forgetting the question Harry had asked of him - _why_ he wanted to lead - but Harry supposed it didn't matter at this point in time. That he'd even been able to speak after a workout like that was amazing, and since Harry had wanted a well thought out answer to the question, it was probably more prudent to bring it up again when they'd gotten to know each other better.

When he could expect honesty because the boy trusted him, and not because Naruto felt a need to convince him that he could do it.

Harry leaned forward, pushing himself out of his half-slouch against the wall.

"Stop," he pitched his voice to be heard, but the boy continued on to the next kata, shooting him a defiant glance that screamed 'Gryffindor'. Harry felt the beginnings of a fond smile curl his lips. Hiding the smile behind his knuckles, Harry let it form fully. Oh yes. He could work with this one.

"Stop, Naruto-kun," Harry repeated firmly, because although it was both nostalgic and amusing to see how the boy's determination pushed his limits, he did expect to be obeyed. Despite that thought, Harry honestly hadn't expected the boy to stop at his second command, so when Naruto reluctantly let his arms drop to his side, he wasn't sure what to think. He'd thought he was in for an uphill battle.

"I can continue," Naruto said, chin jutting out as if waiting for Harry to give him a reason to defend that statement. Harry smiled, conjuring a small towel behind his back as he neared the boy. Holding it out when he was within arms reach, he then nodded.

"I believe you, but being a good shinobi means knowing your limits." He spoke quietly, intently, wanting his words to penetrate and be considered carefully. Naruto opened his mouth as if to protest – probably something about how he hadn't reached his limits yet – but then seemed to rethink his unspoken words, and snapped his jaws shut, accepting the offered towel quietly.

Harry smiled again, letting his eyes trail over the boy's limbs. They weren't _quite_ shaking - though Harry suspected that had more to do with Naruto's bullheaded determination than anything else - but the boy's forehead shone with sweat. Assessing the boy again Harry could see that Naruto had good muscles, well defined and firm, but that his skin seemed less than healthy. Though the sweat covered him with a light shine, it appeared overall dry and inelastic, and his lips were chapped.

Smile fading, Harry narrowed his eyes at the boy's hair. The color was bright – too yellow a blond to be considered natural in England, but practically tame here in Konoha – but it lacked the glossiness of healthy hair, looking coarse and brittle at closer observation.

Lack of proper nutrition, perhaps? If that was the case, he'd have to rectify that as quickly as possible. No matter the boy's determination, working with a strict training regime could be outright dangerous if the boy wasn't in good health.

He'd have to schedule an appointment at Konoha general hospital sometime tomorrow, so Naruto could go through a proper check-up-

"Harry-sensei?"

Harry was startled out of his train of thought at the boy's questioning voice, and realizing that he'd been staring into thin air for some time, he smiled apologetically.

"Sorry, Naruto-kun," he apologized and noted in the back of his mind the utter surprise that flared in the boy's eyes before Naruto grinned.

"So how'd I do?"

If the Unspeakable training hadn't made him so practiced in reading people's emotions, he might have missed the way the boy's smile almost faltered at the question. Mentally raising his eyebrows, Harry wondered how good the boy was at hiding his emotions when he actually tried. He'd assumed Naruto would be as open as he was exuberant, but perhaps he'd judged too quickly. Perhaps there were more layers to this boy than first met the eye.

A bit of Slytherin mixed in with the overall Gryffindor.

He'd been planning to put Naruto through one more test, but though he wasn't sure how it'd happened, he now wasn't as eager to be rid of his new student as he'd been this morning. Mentally shrugging, Harry smiled again at the boy, noticing almost immediately how something in the set of the boy's shoulders relaxed.

Perhaps it wouldn't be wrong to boost the boy's moral a bit- and this could stand in for the final test he'd originally planned for.

"I heard you learned a new technique recently," he began and Naruto practically shone, his smile was so bright. Internally, Harry's smile widened, though externally he kept a straight face.

"Yeah! It's _awesome_," the boy crowed, rocking back on his heels to stare up at Harry brightly. His eyes were as unusually blue as Harry's were green.

"Is it now?" Harry asked, receiving several bob-headed nods in quick succession. He'd never actually seen the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu in action, so he was rather interested in how it could help – and be incorporated into – Naruto's training.

"Wanna see it?"

Having expected the question, Harry nodded solemnly, and watched with avid interest as the boy crossed his index and middle fingers, a focused grimace scrunching up his nose and pursing his lips. Accompanied by poofs of smoke, five clones appeared to either side of the boy, dressed exactly the same as Naruto and wearing the same brilliant grin the boy was directing at him.

Harry nodded approvingly, quickly glancing over the clones to try and find faults, but coming up with nothing. As far as he could tell, they were exact copies of the boy, down to the smallest detail.

"Color me amazed," Harry said, smiling to answer the boy's grin. Naruto's grin widened and he all but bounced in place, bobbing his head in a nod. Harry wasn't sure if it was the praise or the accomplishment itself that had Naruto beaming, but allowed himself to soak up the boy's infectious happiness.

"Aren't I?" His grinned turned confident and Harry's smile thawed a little. While confidence in one's abilities was not remiss, and while Harry was sure Naruto needed positive reinforcement, he would not encourage arrogance. If there was one thing he'd learned over the years, it was that arrogance was not only ugly, but could have debilitating consequences as well.

Clearing his throat, Harry leaned forward intently, pursing his lips when he was sure he'd caught the boy's undivided attention. "Naruto, there is nothing quite as dangerous as arrogance," he began softly, watching as the boy's fading smile turned into a frown of confusion.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and the clones adopted the same befuddled expressions as their creator. It was quite amusing, kind of like seeing two and a half set of miniature Weasley twins, with their near identical reactions to any and all situations.

"If you over-estimate yourself or your abilities, you're much more likely to make a mistake," Harry explained, thinking back on his own errors in judgment before the war had knocked sense into him. They hadn't been due to arrogance so much as his hot temper, but the sentiment remained the same. He hadn't truly considered that he might not be strong enough to do what he was setting out to. Like the Ministry fiasco that resulted in Sirius death.

Naruto's frown deepened and he kicked at the dirt under his feet. "Sasuke-teme was always arrogant, but nobody ever complained about that," he muttered under his breath. Harry saw the twist in the boy's features when he mentioned this 'Sasuke'. Naruto's opinion of him was very obvious.

"And you would like to emulate this 'Sasuke'?" Harry asked, thoughtfully tapping his fingers against his thigh.

Naruto blinked at him, frown still twisting his features. "'Emulate'?" he parroted.

"Imitate." His long friendship with Hermione had boosted his vocabulary, but Harry was amused by how much he recognized his younger self in Naruto's confused expression. He'd worn that expression around his friend many times- and occasionally, still did.

Naruto's head snapped up and his face took on an expression akin to when one bites into a lemon. Harry hid a smile and nodded. "I thought so." Whoever this Sasuke was, Naruto obviously disliked him intensely. Perhaps the two had a history, or perhaps Sasuke's arrogance itself was what caught Naruto's ire.

"So I shouldn't be arrogant. Okay." Naruto nodded, as if the mere thought of Sasuke's arrogance was a conclusive argument. _I'll have to remember that,_ Harry thought. It would be advantageous to have something to fall back on if explanations alone couldn't persuade the boy. Another similarity, he noted in the back of his mind. This Sasuke was obviously Naruto's Malfoy.

"There is a large difference between confidence and arrogance. Without confidence, your steps will falter and your techniques fail. Likewise with arrogance, but for other reasons. Aim for the middle ground," Harry said, paraphrasing parts of what his Unspeakable teacher had once told him. That hard-ass would probably be very amused by it, because Harry had hated those lectures when he was in training. _Not only am I channeling McGonagall, I'm channeling Fitzgerald-Chang. Hermione would be proud._

Naruto's brow creased, and he opened his mouth, only to close it again without speaking. Harry let him think without interruptions, instead folding his arms and pondering the two clones by the boy's side. They should speed up Naruto's training a great deal, in the sense that the boy would be able to learn the katas much quicker, but he doubted the muscle definition would carry over to the original body, no matter how many times Naruto's clones repeated the movements. In addition to that, some things could only be learned and understood by way of experience – the katas wouldn't be useful unless Naruto could apply them in a real fight.

"How do I know?"

Harry broke his train of thought and raised a questioning eyebrow at the boy. Naruto scratched the back of his head, looking embarrassed, and extrapolated: "The difference between arrogance and confidence?"

It was a surprisingly insightful question and Harry took a moment to gather his thoughts for the answer, not wanting to give less of a response than such a question deserved. Harry had asked a similar question once, but since he couldn't quite remember what answer he'd received, he went with his honest opinion. "When you start feeling like the world lays at your feet for you to claim. When you start believing that nobody is as good at you, that you cannot be defeated. That's the dangerous kind of arrogance, the one that leads to fatal mistakes." He'd seen it many times, on both sides, in the war.

Naruto nodded, looking like he was struggling to keep up. Harry wasn't sure whether to encourage him to ask whatever questions he had or if he should remain silent and continue to let Naruto figure things out on his own. The latter seemed more appropriate, at least for now, because he had a feeling Naruto was the kind of boy who regularly spoke without thinking. Kind of like Harry himself had been, he admitted. As a shinobi though, Naruto would have to be able to figure things out on his own, adapt to new information and reinvent set ideas.

"Well," Harry finally interrupted when it looked like the boy wasn't going to break whatever line of thought had sprung in his mind any time soon. "That will be all for today, I think." Rome wasn't built in a day, after all. Hopefully Naruto would remember his words, or at least the gist of them, and if he didn't... well, there was one teacher Harry would never channel. He'd never become Snape. He'd never refuse to repeat important instructions or information.

Naruto's head jerked up, expression twisting first to something wounded, then morphing into something harder and determined that made Harry smile. There was no need to drag things out any further; he had already accepted this, even if he hadn't said it out loud yet. "I expect to see you tomorrow at seven sharp."

It was a roundabout way of putting it and Naruto blinked. The boy's subsequent smile was blinding.

* * *

**A/N:** It's been a while, hasn't it? I apologize, I couldn't figure out the bridge between two scenes- I still utterly dislike the small Harry POV in the beginning of this chapter- and then school was being a particularly harsh whip-wielding mistress in the before-the-holiday finish spurt. Thank you for your reviews, though. They helped me get around to writing on this again! :)

On another note: this story won't contain bashing, if I can help it. If you think I'm slipping into bashing-mode, don't be afraid to say so (though you need to _motivate your opinions_ if you expect me to take notice).

Tell me what you thought of the chapter?


	6. More tests, of other kinds

**Teacher**

_Chapter 6: More tests, of other kinds_

* * *

Harry frowned at the back of the retreating elderly woman and glanced discreetly at Naruto's wide, fixed grin. He might have considered Unsui-san's behavior as one borne from a general dislike of children, or perhaps something sprung from a past in the small town she and her husband had moved away from.

If not for Naruto's reaction.

The moment Unsui had clapped eyes on the boy her face had frozen – and so had Naruto's, though in completely different expression: his small smile had morphed into a large grin that had his eyes squinting, whereas Unsui's indulgent smile had trembled and then lowered at the corners, like she'd been expecting to pet a small furry animal and been presented with a skunk.

"What was that about, I wonder?" Harry asked quietly, peripherally watching the way Naruto stiffened further. That smile must hurt his cheeks; it wasn't an expression of happiness, he was baring his teeth with a mouth formed into a crescent shape. The boy's arms were tight against his sides, and if he became any more tense Harry suspected he'd start vibrating on the spot.

"Ahaha," Naruto chuckled, and it was as fake as the rubber smile, "Maybe I pulled a prank on her?" The boy had been regaling him with stories of his pranks, both successful and less so, all morning. Harry nodded thoughtfully and then turned the boy towards him with a light touch on his shoulder.

"Are you aware that stiffness of the body and the face is one of the typical signs of lying?"

Naruto stiffened further and then very deliberately loosened. Harry stared at him, gaze pointed and the boy's shoulders twitched. Harry sighed. "Your secrets are your own." He wouldn't pry this early, not when the boy was so obviously uncomfortable.

Naruto's head whipped around and he stared, eyes big. "You mean you don't-" His mouth clicked shut and his face wavered between relief and disbelief. Harry arched an eyebrow at the reaction, mind racing.

"Apparently I don't. Would you care to tell me?" Harry's voice was deliberately dry and after a brief hesitation, Naruto shook his head. Harry noted the hesitation and filed it away for further consideration. (If the boy was starting to trust him, that was a step in the right direction. If he was so starved for human connection that he was willing to open up before establishing trust, that was another thing entirely. One that would need to be dealt with.)

He'd have to speak to the Hokage about this, though. He had to be aware of possible obstacles his training the boy could lead to. Working with what was starting to seem like a very large blind spot was dangerous, especially if he and Naruto were going to venture outside of the village for potentially dangerous missions. He was also aware of the fact that reputation had a tendency to spill over to people in the central person's vicinity - both Hermione and Ron had had to deal with that spillage during their fifth year at Hogwarts. They'd also had to deal with it in other respects after the war's end, mainly in the form of fame. Not that he cared overly much for his own reputation, but should he be ostracized later, he at least wanted to know why it was happening.

"On to other things then," Harry said, turning briskly towards the road again. Naruto followed, body language subdued until he noticed Harry's attention. It was both interesting and slightly alarming to see just how fast the boy could change from upset to ostensibly at ease. "I took the liberty of scheduling an appointment at the Aspen Leaf Clinic," Harry said.

Naruto cocked his head. "Aspen? That's just around the corner..." he trailed off for a moment. "So that's where we were going?"

Harry nodded. "Yes. I hadn't expected to run into Unsui-san on the way." Despite looking very closely, Harry didn't notice any discernible reaction to the name. Though perhaps the lack of reaction was because Naruto hadn't really registered the introduction with the situation having turned out as it did.

Naruto shrugged, squinting out at the road. He shifted a little, fingers tapping at his thighs. "Why do I have to go through a check-up?"

Harry caught the boy's attention. "It is not mandatory and you are free to refuse, but if I am to train you, I'd prefer knowing the state of your body."

Naruto looked in turns surprised and confused. "Can't I just tell you that?"

"You can't always accurately tell how your body is actually doing. You may have become used to feeling a certain way over time, to the point where you consider it your body's normal state, when that might not be the case." Harry hoped he didn't sound like he was preaching - he wasn't entirely sure when he'd started channeling his teachers, but this particular tune was one he'd gotten many times over the years from what sometimes felt like every corner.

Naruto's brow creased and he slowly crossed his arms, mouth twisted into a puckered frown. Harry resisted the urge to ask if thinking so hard hurt and let the silence reign. "But Harry-sensei," the boy started, voice absent as he thought things through, "If the body doesn't tell me stuff I need to know, how'll I know when I need a check-up later?"

A part of Harry wondered at the spark of warmth in his chest at the title the boy tacked onto his name and nodded. It was a good question. "You'll notice immediate differences in your well-being, like injuries or sudden illnesses, but symptoms of slow-acting poisons or diseases can take some time to discover. And the time it takes to do so may be what allows the poison or disease to spread to the point of no return." Harry paused, thinking. He didn't want to scare the boy, but on the other hand he didn't want Naruto to go on missions without knowing the dangers either. The boy had chosen too dangerous a path to remain oblivious.

Naruto didn't look particularly scared, or even vaguely fazed. Instead he was nodding. It was a bit strange, seeing such a young boy take in this kind of information with such ease. "Hmm, hmm. I remember some academy teacher saying something like that once."

Harry glanced sideways at the boy. "And did you listen?" Harry wasn't very surprised when Naruto ducked his head and blushed.

Clearing his throat, Naruto swiftly (and indiscreetly) changed the topic. "Anyway! About that check-up?" Harry's lips twitched upwards at the boy's shooing motions, chuckling a little when Naruto stared at him expectantly.

"Alright, let's go."

* * *

Naruto stared around the clinic with wide eyes. He'd only ever been to the large Main Leaf Hospital, and that hospital was painted in cold shades of white and green. The clinic, from what little he could see from his place at Harry's side as his weird teacher spoke to the receptionist, was more like a home. Or like he imagined a home to be. The carpet in front of the entrance door had a pattern resembling sunlight sneaking through shrubbery, and the curtains over the large windows were in red hues.

Naruto smiled at an old woman seated in one of the plump chairs around the table in the corner of the room and grinned when she smiled back. (Something in him, that little voice he sometimes couldn't quite shut out, said she only did so because from the milky look of her eyes, she was half-blind.)

Something nudged at his awareness and Naruto turned around, meeting the receptionist's openly shocked expression. "_Uzumaki Naruto?_" The washed-out gray of her hair tumbled over her shoulders, the tresses bouncing when she stood up and stared at Harry instead.

Naruto felt his stomach sink, a dark gray rock of Bad pushing downwards, and turned to look at Harry. His teacher – _his _teacher – was staring back at the woman with a small crease between his eyebrows. He probably wouldn't have if he had known about the fox and Naruto was almost startled by how fiercely he suddenly wanted her to shut up.

"Yes, miss. Does that pose a problem for you?" Harry's voice was very calm, but in a way that kind of made Naruto feel like he should dive for cover. Not exactly out of fear- mostly so he could get out of the way. For some reason, that urge relaxed him a little. Harry didn't know what was going on, but he wasn't just backing down and assuming Naruto had done something to earn the receptionist's obviously bad opinion of him.

"Wha-" The woman was gaping at them both and that hard feeling in his stomach came back with a vengeance. She could reveal his prisoner to Harry. Rip his teacher away before they'd even done anything much together. Jiji had said that people weren't allowed to talk about it, but maybe this woman would assume that Harry knew, like Naruto himself had at first?

Then Harry leaned forward, the movement as calm and casual as his voice. "This is a clinic, is it not?"

"Y-Yes."

"I have scheduled an appointment for my student. This should show in your list of scheduled appointments." That too-calm voice sent shivers up Naruto's spine, and from the old woman's expressions, more than shivers were climbing hers. He was kind of glad he wasn't the one meeting Harry's eyes at that moment, even if he couldn't really see his teacher's expression.

"I-It does."

"Then you will direct us towards the examination room."

The receptionist stared at Harry and though Naruto could only see his teacher's profile, he thought that hidden edge he'd seen hinted at the day before might just have sprung out of the green of Harry's eyes. And from the look on the receptionist's face, Naruto thought that edge was something he should try very hard not to summon onto himself.

"4B, down the corridor." Looking a bit dazed, the woman pointed to her left. Harry thanked her, voice noticeably curt and turned on his heel towards the corridor. Naruto hurried after him, throwing a last look over his shoulder to see the woman still staring after them.

He stumbled over the threshold into the room Harry swerved to enter, and almost tripped into his teacher. Harry shot him an amused glance over his shoulder, but there was no scorn in the expression, so Naruto didn't feel like he needed to get all up in Harry's face about it. Even if there had been scorn in Harry's eyes, Naruto doubted he would have been able to, still reeling from Harry's not-quite-argument with the receptionist.

"You must be my next appointment." A woman pushed the curtain around an empty hospital bed to the side and turned to face them. Naruto tried hard not to stare too obviously at the long diagonal scar that meandered from the left temple to the right side of her jaw. It was silver in color and stood out brightly against the woman's dark tan.

"Yes, that would be us." Harry stepped up to shake the medic's hand and Naruto scrambled to follow, pausing only to kick the door shut behind him. "Or, more to the point, him."

Naruto looked up and into the woman's dark eyes, gearing himself up for an uphill battle and deflating when he found nothing to fight against in the medic's gaze.

"Uzumaki Naruto, is it not? Yakushi Junko, at your service." She even did a small bow and Naruto would have gaped at her if he hadn't seen Harry's pointed glance. He wasn't good at social courtesies, but even he could tell what was expected of him in return.

He bowed back, feeling clumsy but also kind of happy, and greeted her. "Oh, and this is my teacher, Potteru Harry!" Naruto added and it was a little embarrassing to trip over your own teacher's name, but it was hardly his fault that Harry's family name was so strange.

Maybe his teacher was from a clan? Some of the people in his class who came from clans had pretty unusual names. Naruto shrugged away the thought to be pondered later and jumped up to sit at the bed when Yakushi gestured for him to do so.

"You wanted the full workup, correct?" She glanced at Harry, who nodded.

"Yes. You have his medical history?"

She nodded and then turned to Naruto, hands deftly slipping under his shirt to prod at his stomach. Naruto held back the snorts of laughter that wanted to escape him whenever Yakushi hit a particularly ticklish spot.

Pushing him down onto his back, she poked at him some more and hummed under her breath before she pulled him back up into a seated position and ordered him to breathe, shone into his eyes with a small flashlight, pushed an even smaller flashlight into his ears... really, Naruto was proud of his patience in the face of her persistent poking!

"Hm." Yakushi frowned and glanced at where Harry-sensei stood leaning against the wall. Naruto wouldn't say anything, but it was kind of comforting to have him there. Not that he was _scared_ of Yakushi or anything, but as a rule the medics he'd been to when he was younger didn't really like him.

Harry pushed away from the wall. "Is something the matter?"

"Lasting miosis." She waved a hand towards his face and Harry frowned, taking a step closer.

"Like with overexposure to opioids?" Harry's voice was slow and thoughtful and Naruto saw his eyes flash with that hidden edge. He recognized that word, or something similar to it, from the Academy... 'opiates'. Wasn't it some kind of medicine? Or was it a weapon?

"Lets not jump to conclusions." Yakushi's tone was mild and Naruto wasn't sure what they were talking about, but his teacher seemed to relax a little. "Normally I would ask for a urine sample, but in this case I believe a blood sample may be in order."

Naruto made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. "Hey, hey! Don't talk like I'm not here! What's going on? What's this mio-thing and opiates and -" He could have continued in that way for quite some time, annoyed with the way they'd been ignoring him, when Harry was suddenly at his side, a hand on his shoulder.

Naruto's mouth immediately snapped shut and he stared up at his teacher's face. That reaction probably seemed pretty strange to Harry, but Naruto didn't care right now. His teacher had touched him again, willingly. Only Iruka and Old Man Hokage usually did that. And even Iruka had taken longer than a few days to do so.

But then, Harry didn't know about the stupid fox. He'd have to remember that.

"Naruto, your pupil is contracting even without exposure to a light source and Yakushi-san needs a blood sample to determine the reason for why it's happening." That didn't make much sense really, but Naruto nodded anyway. Harry had actually taken the time to explain when he'd asked, and his voice was calm. He didn't act like he thought Naruto should just keep his mouth shut, and because of that, Naruto suddenly didn't feel the need to yell at them anymore.

It wasn't really a big deal to take his blood; Naruto couldn't even feel the needle prick his skin. Yakushi was just that awesome, doing an expert little twist with her wrist and finding the vein right away. It was kind of interesting to watch too, the way the blood poured upwards into the syringe's glass cylinder.

Yakushi placed a band-aid over the drop of blood in the crook of his elbow, but Naruto could have told her that wasn't necessary. The tiny pinprick was probably already healed. He said nothing though, just grinned at her when she rolled down his sleeve, and grinned wider when she gave him a small smile in return.

"All right, Uzumaki-kun. The last test." The medic nodded at a board with a large black romanji letter on top, and rows of successively smaller letters lined up underneath it, until they disappeared into a line of tiny blurry squiggles.

Naruto read them out when she told him to until he got to the row where the letters looked more like smudges, and waited for the medic to jot something down on her notepad. When she looked up again, he asked, "So how'd I do?"

"Quite well, Uzumaki-kun." She gave him another quick little smile that became a small frown when she turned to Harry. "It appears the miosis isn't affecting his visual acuity in the slightest."

"Is that of concern?" Harry was frowning too. Naruto wasn't sure exactly why him having good vision would be 'of concern', but it sounded kind of ominous.

Yakushi shrugged a little, just a twitch of her shoulders, and then met Naruto's eyes. "Not necessarily. It's just a small, but fortunate oddity for a shinobi like yourself. My brother is a genin, and I know that him wearing glasses was of some worry to my father when he first enrolled in the Academy."

Naruto brightened and bounced forward on his butt, the hospital bed creaking under him in protest. He didn't really know any genin, and this seemed like an opportunity to ask some stuff he'd wanted to know. "Neh, Yakushi, what's it like being a genin? Is your brother any good? Maybe me and him could spar sometime! Unless he's out on missions a lot. Is he out on missions a lot? Really cool and awesome ones?"

"Naruto, one question at the time." Harry's voice was amused.

Naruto's eyes darted to his teacher and he colored a little. That was something Iruka told him often enough that Naruto actually made an effort to remember it, but sometimes it was like his mouth talked before he'd even thought a question. And even if he knew in his mind that he wasn't supposed to do something, it was hard to remember that until he'd already done it. Or until someone reminded him.

Plus, people were a lot more likely to answer at least one question if he asked many of them all at once. They'd look annoyed and roll their eyes, but they wouldn't ignore him.

"Sorry, Yakushi-san." He'd at least remembered the honorific this time, which was something he always forgot otherwise. It was probably because Harry had called the medic 'Yakushi-san' and Naruto was already starting to like his teacher (kind of a lot actually), so when Harry had said her name with honorifics and all, it made Naruto want to do the same for some reason.

"It's quite alright, Uzumaki-kun." Yakushi looked as amused as Harry had sounded. "My brother is a solid genin, though not yet up to chunin level. His medical techniques are very good, and yes, he is out on missions often. He does come by the clinic once a week or so; you could ask him for a spar when you and Potteru-san comes for the exam results. If your teacher doesn't mind," and here her eyes flickered to Harry, "I could schedule your appointment just before my lunch break Friday next week?"

Naruto turned expectantly to Harry, though he felt kind of overwhelmed by the way the medic so readily agreed to help him. He'd just thrown the idea of a spar out there, not really expecting her to take it seriously. Or give him an opportunity to actually meet her genin brother. People usually never seemed very eager to have him around their family members.

"I don't see why not." Harry shrugged, looking like it didn't matter either way, and Naruto grinned.

Things were starting to look up, and even when he caught some villagers glaring at him on his and Harry's way back, the grin on Naruto's face remained sincere. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this good.

* * *

**A/N:** It's been forever, I know :/ I'm sorry; as usual, I've been busy with RL. And as usual, I reread your reviews (plus some polite PM's from various readers) and it gave me the motivation to finish this chapter.

Tell me what you thought?

**Now to something else:** I have a huge amount of plotbunny-beginnings laying around my computer, and I was thinking of making an archive of sorts on my LJ (which pretty much never gets any use). I don't want to do it here on FF, because I'd either have to 1) make an actual archive, with chapters of different stories piled on top of each other, or 2) start new stories with plotbunnies I'm not sure will ever develop into full-length fics.

They're usually only a few thousand words worth of fic, but I figured some of you might be interested anyway? If anything, my posting them (hopefully at semi-regular intervals) will show you that I'm not dead even when my official stories haven't been updated for a while. Hompage link at my profile gets you to my LJ :)

**First up:** "So you want me to seduce this 'Tougeika Haru'," Shikamaru said flatly. Because even though seduction missions aren't his forte, Shikamaru is a shinobi. And no matter how troublesome some missions are, as a shinobi, you're not allowed to say no. (HP/NTO)


	7. Thought is action in rehearsal

**Teacher**

_Chapter 7: Thought is action in rehearsal_

* * *

A few days of training passed quickly, with Harry drilling his new student in the first series of Hanran katas and seeing Naruto's determination in every wrongly preformed move that tripped the blond up and just made him try harder the next time around. Naruto wasn't a particularly quick study, mostly because he lacked the patience needed to repeatedly complete the careful movements correctly, but in Harry's opinion the blond wasn't really slow, either. Naruto just had a child's restlessness, coupled with what Harry assumed was the blond's own naturally energetic disposition. He had a feeling that giving his new student some exercises to improve concentration had the potential to work wonders.

"That's enough for now," Harry said when the blond completed a four-series movement, beginning in a crouch and then spinning up into a powerful kick. Naruto's responding look was a bit baleful, but he stopped and spent a moment with his hands on his knees, just breathing. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and he panted something vaguely thankful when Harry handed him a small towel he'd moistened with cold water.

"Neh, Harry-sensei," Naruto spoke up after a minute wherein his breathing had completely stabilized. The boy had nothing if not stamina, and for anyone wanting to fight with the Hanran, that was a very good trait to have. "How come we haven't done any missions yet?"

Harry wasn't surprised at the question. Yesterday they had at a distance seen a genin team mending a fence, and Naruto had looked a little fidgety ever since. "Do you want a mission?"

The ANBU member who had dropped off his hitai-ate had also given Harry a volume on the rules for governing genin teams, but he hadn't gotten around to reading it until he was done with the initial testing that had decided Naruto's chances to become his student. There wasn't much point in reading something that would never be useful – though Hermione would lecture him terribly if she ever heard him say that, an advocate for 'knowledge for knowledge sake' as she was. Reading the book he'd discovered that as a jounin-sensei he was pretty much allowed to freely choose how to train and educate his genin, though there were a few basic skills he was supposed to impart before the year was up.

"They look completely boring, all weeding and fixing roofs and stuff, but isn't it, I dunno, part of being a genin?" Naruto had taken to actually fully vocalizing his questions, and not always at an eardrum-shattering volume, something Harry was quite happy about. Though there was something very strange about how little it took for the blond to listen to him. Oh, he was far from being a completely obedient student, but when he didn't agree with something he argued his case (though not always with the best of arguments) instead of just refusing to do what Harry told him without an explanation.

"I suppose it is," Harry mused, going over his own half-formed thoughts on the matter. He didn't know much about new genin missions besides them supposedly being relatively simple, but actually starting to inculcate the routine in Naruto might not be such a bad idea. The boy had a tendency to overestimate himself when it came to how long it would take him to do one thing or other, making declarations that he'd 'do this kata perfectly', no matter how long he'd taken to learn the previous one. Perhaps setting a routine would help teach the boy time management, since whatever schedule he'd had in the Academy apparently hadn't succeeded in that. "Alright. We'll request a mission tomorrow."

Naruto looked at him, narrowing his eyes. Harry though it might be what the blond thought of as a 'suspicious look', but with the way it bunched up his cheeks, the expression was hard to take seriously. He could easily imagine Naruto practicing the look in a mirror, copied from some character he'd seen on TV or some such. "It won't mean we won't do the katas, right?"

Harry shook his head, smiling a little. Naruto immediately dropped the look and grinned back, bouncing on his toes. The boy was tenacious as few people Harry had ever met, at times complaining but never refusing to repeat the same movements over and over at Harry's say-so. Despite his occasional grumbling the blond always seemed eager, and he'd had proclaimed several times that completing the katas meant he was one step closer to 'taking the hat' from 'the old man', a thought that apparently never failed to motivate him. "We'll do a mission first, and depending on how long it takes, we'll then do the katas."

Naruto crossed his arms, nodding. "Hmm, hmm. But if it takes too long, maybe we shouldn't do too many missions? I don't wanna miss out on training to do weeding..." He tilted his head to the side, brow furrowed in thought.

"You have a way around that, Naruto," Harry said, half-amused, half-exasperated that the blond hadn't thought of it himself yet. Harry had considered pointing it out to his student himself, but since he'd already decided he wanted to teach the boy how to think for himself rather than rely on Harry to tell him what to do, he hadn't done so yet.

"Eh? What? I do?" Naruto's serious look disappeared like it hadn't even been there, and suddenly he was a big blond puppy jumping up and down as he waited for a treat. Harry had to smother a chuckle.

"You do. But I won't tell you what it is."

Naruto's face fell and there was a moment where the blue of his eyes darkened with what Harry thought were bad memories, before Naruto stared up at him. And here was the reason Harry couldn't take the suspicious looks Naruto worked at applying seriously. Because of the occasional moment like this, where the blond's expression shifted into something else, something with an edge. Harry suspected that as Naruto aged, that look would make people sit up and take notice. Currently though, it was more jarring than respectable, and Harry met it with his own calm gaze.

"...Because I'm supposed to figure it out for myself?" Naruto asked finally, and Harry let an approving smile spread on his face. Since he was trying to instill in Naruto the desire to work things out for himself, he had over the past few days repeatedly told the blond to 'try figuring it out yourself before asking'. Apparently him saying that had caught on.

"Okay! I'll definitely have figured it out before the mission tomorrow!" He pumped his fist in the air as if for emphasis, and Harry blinked, wondering if he would ever be able to keep up with his new student's mood-swings.

"I'm sure you will," he said dryly, and then continued, "But for now, I want you to repeat that four-step and add the two-step katas you learned to combine yesterday..."

* * *

Naruto rolled out of bed with an annoyed sigh. He wasn't going to be able to fall asleep tonight, not with the way he'd promised Harry-sensei that he'd figure out how to complete missions really quickly so he could still train as much as he had been these past few days.

He wandered into the kitchen, frowning at the way his thoughts only revisited the same ideas over and over again. Harry had said he 'had a way around it', so the solution wasn't just to do the missions really quickly, like he'd first thought to say to his teacher. Because that wasn't really a solution – of course he'd try to do the missions really quickly. He'd do that whether he was supposed to train afterwards or not.

Grabbing a carton of milk from the fridge and a glass from a cupboard, Naruto sat down in the chair by the table and frowned some more. He doubted Harry meant that he was supposed to ask Harry himself for help to complete the mission, because it was _Naruto's_ mission. Though maybe he could ask his teacher if genin completing missions on their own was actually a rule or not.

Naruto wasn't sure why keeping his word when he made promises to Harry felt so important. Maybe it was because his teacher sometimes made him feel a bit like Iruka-sensei had when he'd first become one of Naruto's precious people? Like something warm was curled in his chest, snoozing somewhere in there.

Either way, Naruto didn't want to meet up with Harry tomorrow without an answer to give. His teacher expected him to be able to figure this out for himself. Iruka sometimes said things like that too, but most of the other teachers in the academy were stupid, and if Naruto had to choose between trying to come up with answers they'd just ignore, what was the point of trying to come up with the right answer in the first place? Besides, the lectures were boring, always about long-dead people who had done something important way back when and how the class should learn from their examples and blah blah blah.

Harry didn't really talk about old ninjas at all, though he'd explained some melee strategies where the katas Naruto had learned so far had been used, and that was actually pretty interesting. Knowing how to put the movements together would make him a better fighter, definitely, and Harry explained stuff not only with words but by showing him the tactics in action. He'd had Naruto summon a Kage Bunshin yesterday to spar against – well, it wasn't much of a spar, since Harry was so much faster and more graceful than he was, but the way his teacher moved when he did the katas was like a shot of pure motivation.

Naruto wanted to be able to do that, use his body like that. The powerful twist of a leg into a kick and the sharp snap of a wrist and into an open-palm slap that would probably have broken his neck if Harry had done that against the real him. Seeing it from the clone's eyes was scary enough.

Naruto blinked at that, sat up straight and snorted out his mouthful of milk over the table. His thoughts slowed down and then sped up until they were racing and tripping over themselves. There it was - that was the solution! His Kage Bunshin! Naruto stared blankly at the tabletop as his mind whirled around the possibilities. Why had it taken him so long to realize that _of course_ having more copies of himself working on the mission would help him complete it faster?

Naruto sniggered into the glass, gulped the rest of the milk down and then went back to bed, whistling. He was going to show Harry-sensei tomorrow that he could keep up with his teacher's expectations.

-.-.-.-

The annoying beeping of his alarm woke Naruto up, but after his habitual stretch and a quick glare at his clock, he fairly bounced out of bed. The sunlight copied his mood, shining bright and warm on everything in sight, and Naruto barely gave himself time to eat breakfast before he was out of the door.

He knew the way to Harry's house by heart already, and ran the whole way there before speeding around it to the backyard where they did most of the training. How awesome was it, having a teacher who had his own little training ground? The small grassy field was open - perfect for sparring or doing katas, though it lacked any of the typical accessories other training grounds had. Naruto had seen grounds with built-in traps and obstacle courses, though most training grounds had only poles to kick or hit, or trees to climb.

Naruto stopped in the middle of the field, wondering if perhaps this wasn't a training ground after all. Maybe it was just Harry-sensei's backyard that the teacher decided to use for training him? Naruto wasn't sure if that thought made him very happy or guilty, and since he might just be guessing something that wasn't true anyway, he shrugged it off as well as he could.

"Harry-sensei?" he called out after a moment of searching for Harry with his eyes, wondering if his teacher was still inside.

"Here." A dark head of hair poked out of the window to the yard, and Naruto blinked when Harry covered a yawn behind his hand, pushing a fingers through his hair. His teacher rarely looked this disheveled, even if his hair usually did flop about his head a bit.

Harry waved a hand towards him and Naruto was at the window in a second, grinning. There was something about seeing his teacher looking less like some stuffy courtly person and more like a normal person that made him want to giggle a little.

He was about to open his mouth and declare that he'd solved the problem Harry had set him, when he noticed the small red rock in his teacher's hand. It looked kind of like the ruby he'd seen around the neck of the Daimyo's wife on this one picture in the Academy.

He leaned closer. "What's that?"

Harry smiled. "This is a bezoar." He held it up between his index finger and thumb, and Naruto narrowed his eyes as he leaned even closer. It didn't look much like a stone this close. There seemed to be fibers nestled inside of it, like fine hairs... Naruto raised a finger and put the tip to the surface. Warm and rough, but it didn't feel as hard as a stone did.

"What's a _be-so-aru_?" Naruto said, trying to pronounce the strange word like Harry-sensei did and failing pretty miserably. "_Be-so-aru_," he tried again and frowned. Harry repeated the word and they went back and forth like that a few times until Naruto could pronounce it properly. And not once did his teacher look like he thought Naruto was being stupid for taking several times to get it right.

"It's a poison antidote," Harry explained. "Found naturally in the stomach of goats -" Naruto screwed his face into a grimace at that, "- and then boiled in a potion. That's what gives it its red color and it's transparency."

Naruto blinked and carefully repeated the information several times, since Harry might want him to remember it. "Oh, okay. But, eh, what were you doing with it?"

Harry gave him a dry look. "Boiling it." He ducked back in before Naruto could do much more than flush a little, and a second later climbed out the window. He arched his back like a cat in a stretch and Naruto frowned when he heard a small series of pops from his teacher's spine. Harry looked at him from the corner of his eye and smiled a little. "It takes hours to boil the damn things, and they have to be watched constantly. Sitting bent over a table for hours on end doesn't do much good for my back."

Naruto frowned harder. Harry-sensei looked tired, even though he was moving with the same easy grace Naruto was used to seeing. "And you were doing that all night?" Why was a shinobi making antidotes in the first place? Naruto hadn't gotten the impression that Harry was a medic, but... maybe he worked extra for the hospital?

"That, and drinking coffee." He leaned back on the house wall, turning his face up towards the sun. "Did you find a solution for how to manage your time more effectively?" he asked casually, opening one eye to look at Naruto.

Naruto forgot all about bezoars and Harry being possibly slightly medic-y in that second and bounced on the balls of his feet. "Yeah! I stayed up a long time yesterday thinking about it, and I figured it out!" He grinned widely and Harry waved for him to go on, looking kind of amused. "I can use Kage Bunshin to do it! They can work on easy missions as much as I can, 'cause it's not like weeding would pop them, and they can help out and make it go a lot faster! And then there'll still be time for training!"

Harry smiled and Naruto felt like an especially warm ray of sun fell on him. His teacher looked like Iruka did when Naruto got things right on a test, like he was _proud_, and Naruto's grin widened until his cheeks hurt. "Told you I'd get it!"

Harry's lips twitched, like he wanted to smile even more. "So you did. I guess this means you're ready for your first mission?" He pushed away from the wall.

Naruto puffed out his chest. "Yes!"

* * *

Harry looked down at his student as they walked towards the Hokage's tower, holding back the chuckle tickling his throat at the way Naruto walked – no, _strutted_ down the street. He wasn't going to encourage arrogance in his student, but after the debacle with Unsui and the clinic receptionist, and considering how hard Naruto had worked the past few days, Harry rather thought his student deserved to feel proud.

That the occasional hard stare from some of the people they passed went unnoticed, or were sincerely ignored, by Naruto in his good mood was just a plus. There was something admirable in how the boy choose happiness over being affected by all the negativity thrown his way, and Harry wished he'd had that ability himself when he was Naruto's age and the whole Parseltongue incident had gone down as it did.

They entered the tower, with Harry nodding to the two stone-faced guards at the door, and Naruto led the way to Sarutobi's office. Harry looked at the blond thoughtfully as he navigated the corridors with ease, wondering just how often the boy had been here. How close were Naruto and the Hokage?

There were two more guards outside the Hokage's office, and Naruto blithely ignored them as he knocked energetically on the door.

"Naruto, he's not deaf," Harry murmured softly and Naruto swung back to look at him in confusion, before the meaning of the words registered. The blond put a hand on the back of his head and smiled sheepishly, and Harry was glad to see the gentle admonishment didn't bring Naruto's mood down.

"Come in," Sarutobi's voice called, and Naruto promptly turned back to face the door, opening it with a cheery greeting and bouncing over the threshold. Harry followed his student with a small sigh, nodding to the guards (who, if Harry wasn't reading them completely wrong, were a little amused) and then shut the door behind himself. Naruto was already at Sarutobi's desk, chatting a mile a minute about everything that had happened so far this morning – not that there was really all that much to tell.

Harry met the Hokage's eyes with a long-suffering look over Naruto's head that made Sarutobi's lips twitch around his pipe.

"- and I don't get why the hospital can't boil their own stones anyway, 'cause Harry is my teacher and he shouldn't have to do all that extra stuff. What if he gets so tired he faints?" Naruto took a moment to look horrified at the thought and Harry rubbed his forehead. Right. Concentration exercises and mediation, definitely.

"I do believe your teacher could stand to lose a few hours of sleep without fainting, Naruto-kun," Sarutobi said, his slow, deep voice as amused as his eyes, though Harry doubted that Naruto actually caught the expression, subtle as it was.

"Maybe. Yeah. He's a super awesome shinobi, so I guess he can take it..." The blond nodded to himself and Harry let out another quiet sigh. As much progress as Naruto had made in this short period of time, it wasn't like a few days of work was going to turn him into a quiet, thoughtful and mature person. The boy was, after all, only twelve.

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Sarutobi asked and Harry stepped forward. Naruto, who'd apparently been about to explain what they were here for himself, quieted when Harry placed a hand on his blond mop of hair. It felt as dry as it looked, and Harry made a mental note to check his inventory lists to see if he had any magical supplements Naruto could safely take.

"We would like a mission," Harry said, back straight. Under his hand he felt Naruto straighten with him, and ruffled the boy's hair a little.

Sarutobi nodded, taking another drag of his pipe. "You are early enough that I have several missions available for you to choose from." He picked up a scroll marked with several 'D's' and then read, "Planting potatoes, baby-sitting, running an errand to one of our outposts, painting a house in one of the the civilian sectors, moving furniture for a couple relocating to the other side of the village..." He continued listing about a dozen other missions and then nodded for them to make their choice.

"Which one do we get?" Naruto asked, bending his neck to stare up at Harry.

"Which one do you want?" Harry asked calmly, surprised but pleased that the boy hadn't just shouted what he was most interested in.

Naruto's face scrunched up in thoughtfulness. "I like planting stuff, but I've never been out of the village before..." Harry said nothing, waiting for the blond to take his pick. Finally Naruto nodded. "The outpost one."

"Alright." Sarutobi pulled a scroll up from somewhere – Harry guessed there were drawers underneath the tabletops – and held it out. Naruto twitched like he was about to jump forward, but then stopped and looked up at Harry again, like he was asking for permission. Harry smiled, nodding and the blond immediately leaped forward, all but snatching the scroll from the Hokage in his haste to get his hand on it.

He unrolled it eagerly. "My first mission!" Harry heard him murmur under his breath, and then louder, "We're supposed to deliver this -" and here he held up a smaller scroll that had apparently been inside the larger one, "To the Kanzaki outpost." He frowned in thought. "I think that's the one to the west of Konoha," he said and while Harry had no idea if that was the case or not, the Hokage nodded. Harry made another mental note to memorize a map, since knowing less than his own student about the terrain and the locations they would be traveling over, to and from was more than just a little embarrassing.

"Indeed. Very good, Naruto." Naruto grinned. Sarutobi looked at the blond for a long moment, and to Harry the old Hokage's expression seemed wistful. Then he straightened and nodded at them both seriously, though Harry suspected that was more for Naruto's benefit than his, since the blond puffed out his chest in response and nodded back just as seriously.

"I expect you back tomorrow at the latest. Good luck on your first mission, Team Potter."

* * *

**A/N:** Still busy. Geh. Thank you for your reviews, they're pure spicy awesomesauce and keep me going.

...In case you haven't noticed this yet, I love character progression stuff.

Oh, and – **SPOILERS** FOR THE LATER CHAPTERS OF THE MANGA COMING UP – I am not fond of a lot of the development we've seen recently or semi-recently in the manga. I know Naruto is a children's series, but this whole_ blah_ where pretty much every villain is just misunderstood/misguided and actually Nice All Along (with an occasional: Just Add Naruto Instant Therapy!)... I don't much like it. (I'm looking at you, Gaara's father/uncle/mother and you, Kyuubi/Kurama and you Pein and you Itachi and... *sigh*) CONCLUSION: I'M PROBABLY GOING TO BE IGNORING SOME/A LOT OF THIS STUFF. I hope you don't mind terribly (but honestly, even if you do, I'm going to ignore it anyway. Sorry.)

(On another note: Changeling isn't dead, it's just that that fic takes more research for stuff I'm planning, and when I'm already doing research for school... *shrugs* NOT DEAD, THOUGH.)

(And on yet another note: I crossposted a Supernatural fic from my LJ to my profile, for any interested Supernatural fan.)


	8. The Hourglass Scroll

**Teacher**

_Chapter 8: The Hourglass Scroll_

* * *

Harry kept one eye on Naruto, who had rejoined him after a quick stop at his apartment, toting a large brown backpack that bulged every which way and that was topped by a bedroll. The whole thing reminded Harry vaguely of a caterpillar perched on a rock.

"Naruto, here," Harry said, exasperated when the blond insisted he had to have every single thing he'd packed, even though that meant he couldn't actually close the backpack. Naruto looked up from where he'd been trying to pull the flap shut by sheer will. "Take this." As enthusiastically as his student was going about this, he was bound to end up ripping the seam that kept the flap attached.

Naruto frowned at the small bag held out to him, then moved his gaze to Harry. "Sensei, I don't think _any_ of my stuff will fit in there." He squinted at it. "Maybe the kunai, but I have my pouch for that."

A smile tugged at the corner of Harry's lips. "It's a special bag, Naruto."

Naruto blinked, the look in his eyes changing from skeptical to curious. "Special? How?"

"Try putting... hmm... try putting the bedroll in it?" Harry suggested, smiling wider when the blond's forehead creased with confusion. The small bag wasn't even half the size of the bedroll.

Then Naruto shrugged, and with movements that said he was just doing it to please Harry, he unhooked the bedroll from the backpack, opened the small bag and shoved one end into it. And promptly stumbled, as the bag swallowed both the bedroll and Naruto's arm up to his shoulder. "Wah!" The blond flailed for a second, stumbling back and then ripping his arm out of the bag, like he was afraid it might swallow the rest of him too.

Spinning around, he stared up at Harry with wide eyes. Harry crossed his arms over his chest, struggling not to laugh at the goldfish-like expression on his student's face.

"What kind of bag is this, Harry-sensei?" He stared at it in fascination, tugging on one corner and squinting, like he thought he might be able to figure out how the bedroll had fit into it if he stared hard enough.

"It's bigger on the inside than on the outside," Harry said, still struggling not to laugh. Fred would have been proud of him for pranking the poor unsuspecting boy like this.

"How?" Still looking mystified, Naruto pushed a hand into the bag again, and Harry thought he might be flailing it around in there, even if that didn't show on the outside.

Harry thought for a moment before he answered. "It's a special technique that my people invented," he said, which wasn't a lie. Naruto looked up with a confused frown, slowly withdrawing his arm from the bag.

"'Your people'? You mean, your friends?"

Harry had known he wouldn't be able to keep his status as an outsider a secret, and this was as good a time as any to throw the boy a bone. "I wasn't born in Konoha. I'm allied with your Hokage, and I moved here on his invitation." Although it had taken some time for him to accept that invitation, he wasn't being untruthful.

"Oh." The blond blinked, looking uncertain, and thoughtfully ran his fingers across one side of the bag. "Where were you born then, Harry-sensei?" Harry smiled at the curious lilt to Naruto's voice, like he was struggling to imagine the kind of place Harry might have hailed from.

Harry shook his head. "It's very far from here." Naruto's mood shifted in that lightning-quick way it did, and he opened his mouth like he was preparing to shout in indignation at the non-answer. Harry held up his hand. "It's classified. Suffice to say that even if I told you were I'm from, you wouldn't have heard of it anyway."

The blond's mouth closed, and disappointment flitted over his face. Only for a moment, though. "Okay, but this special technique that your people invented, how does it work?" He looked excited, mood once again snapping from one end of the spectrum to the other.

"To summarize: it manipulates space." Though that was really the bare basics. Hermione knew the theory much better than he himself did.

"How?" The boy leaned forward, still looking excited.

"I can't tell you that. At least not yet." He wasn't sure how much he wanted to reveal to Naruto when the boy was still so loose-mouthed and prone to excitable outbursts. Naruto looked offended for a moment, half like he might protest and half like he might be a little hurt, but then his face slowly cleared as he apparently came to some realization.

"Yeah, okay. One of those classified things." He nodded to himself, and Harry decided to let the assumption stand. It wasn't really a _false_ assumption, not entirely, and it did edge in on the things that truly were classified. Or at least a secret by unspoken mutual agreement between him and Sarutobi.

"Shall we take our leave, then?" Harry asked, not quite trying to distract the boy but succeeding in doing so anyway, if Naruto's bright grin and eager nod was any indication.

–

Darkness was falling when Harry remembered his previous half-formed thought to give Naruto a concentration exercise to try and improve his focus. The boy had been jumping all over the road since they passed the gates, occasionally stopping to stare at one interesting thing or other, and at other times badgering him with the most inane of questions.

It had gotten to the point where Harry was about to do something drastic just to shut the kid up for a few minutes when the idea made a reappearance.

"Naruto," he called to his student, who was hovering over a rock by the side of the road, entranced by a tiny frog. Naruto looked up with a grin and at a small gesture from Harry, immediately walked up to him. "I want you to do something for me." He picked up a small pebble from the ground and dropped it into the blond's hands. "I want you to balance this on the tip of your index finger for as long as you can."

Naruto frowned down at the pebble, obviously confused. "Why?"

Harry debated keeping the truth to himself for now, but since he wanted Naruto to ask questions when possible, that didn't seem like the best idea at this time. He wouldn't even have entertained the thought if not for the fact that Naruto had told him how much he'd hated the Academy's meditation sessions about as much as he'd hated doing 'leaf balancing'. This was really more of the same, and he didn't want the boy to be unmotivated before he even began.

But in the interest of not keeping more secrets than he had to... "I think we need to improve your focus."

Looking sullen, and a bit like this might have been something he'd heard many times before, Naruto asked, "And balancing a tiny stone on my finger will?"

It wasn't really a known method for improving focus, but Harry didn't have the materials for any structured exercises. For now, this would have to do. "I hope so."

"Hmph. Fine. At least I don't have to just sit for hours and hours in silence. "Like this?" He said, placing the pebble on the pad of his finger. Shaking his head, Harry turned the boy's hand over and replaced the pebble on his nail instead. It wobbled in place even when Naruto was obviously trying to keep his hand as still as possible.

The next two hours were spent watching his student walk as stiff as a board with his arm stretched out in front of him and trying not to chuckle at Naruto's muttered curses whenever the pebble fell from its perch - which at the start of the two hours had been once every ten seconds and at the end of the two hours was about once every one or two minutes. Naruto was wholly focused on his task, expression contorted into a mask of almost comical concentration, brows drawn together and the tip of the boy's tongue peeking out at the corner of his lips.

It had been two hours of blessed silence in which Harry had actually managed to take some time to memorize a map of Konoha and its surroundings, so when he suddenly felt the earth underneath him tremble and shift, he was almost unsurprised. Whenever it seemed like a task was going to be easy or straight-forward, it invariably ended up being a complicated tangle of age-old conspiracies, betrayals and snakes digging themselves out of people's necks.

Harry cast a silent Homenum Revelio to the left, where the rippling underneath him was the strongest-

"Whoa," Naruto tripped over his feet and spun around. "Sensei, did you feel that -?"

Instead of giving in to his surprise and the urge to gape at the boy – how could a boy barely out of the Academy feel that? He'd performed the spell in the village once or twice, and nobody had reacted – and instead threw himself forward, wrapping an arm around his student and Apparating to the right just as the dirt road exploded where they'd been not a second before.

Paying no heed to the choked noises coming from Naruto, Harry threw up a shield around the boy and then moved forward. The Revelio hadn't caught any other people in the vicinity, so as long as he kept the unknown nin's attention firmly on himself, he shouldn't have to worry about his student. Between one breath and the next, Harry shifted into the _Se_ and dampened his presence as much as possible. Since he was without a team, he couldn't fight in the true spirit of the style, but it wasn't like it was useless just because he was alone.

The black-clad shinobi was unremarkable except for his bright red, spiky hair – the only part of his body that was visible – but in the eye-holes of his mask, Harry saw the man's gaze shift and search. Good. The man wasn't one of those chakra tracking people, didn't notice that Harry's signature hadn't faded completely where he stood crouched behind a tree.

The man's head turned to look at the treeline on the opposite side, and in the opening provided, Harry moved. With loping steps like a gazelle, as light, careful and treacherous as a prey-animal, Harry ran forward. His dagger came up in an arch that wasn't quite as graceful as the move the unknown shinobi made to counter it – but no matter, Harry had always preferred his wand to his Fairbairn-Sykes, would have used it if not for the close proximity of his student, and as he spun into a low kick he faded out again to buy himself another opening.

Of course, as he was still within the man's sight, he couldn't hide – but he could throw off the shinobi's perception of his body, where Harry's hands and feet were and how they moved when out of sight. The shinobi's hand came up to clasp around his arm like a vice, his grip stronger than Harry could break – but he didn't need to break it. He was close enough now that there was no way a spell would go wide. His wand slid out as smoothly as silk moved over velvet, and with familiar wood between his fingers, Harry put the very tip to the covered neck in front of him.

"A stick?" The man snorted, Harry smiled, and a red flash of Stupify later he had his arms full of unconscious enemy. A pretty familiar situation, all in all.

"S-Sensei..." Harry turned around to see Naruto with his hand clapped over his mouth, eyes wide. He looked a little pale and Harry was sorry this unexpected mess had to be the blond's first experience of a fight, even if he hadn't participated in it himself. Laying the enemy shinobi on his back, the thought hit him that perhaps this was better after all – that Naruto had gotten to see a real fight, as short as it had been, before he had to partake in one. Even if he hadn't been prepared.

Merlin knew Harry had had nightmares about Quirrell after that whole debacle, it being his first real experience with life and death fighting. If he'd seen a fight like that before that experience... but no matter, now.

The boy's throat bobbed as he swallowed. "Is he dead?" Despite his obvious discomfort, Naruto took a few steps closer, and Harry felt approval swell in his chest. In this moment, the blond reminded him strangely of Neville, afraid but willing to be brave.

"No." Crouching over the prone body, Harry carefully removed the mask. "I tend to want to know _why_ people pop up to kill me before I kill them," he said, inserting dryness into his voice and watching from the corner of his eyes how Naruto huffed out a shaky little laugh. More bravado than real humor, but it was something.

The boy came forward to stand at his shoulder, and Harry remained crouched to let Naruto tower over him. "Sensei," he spoke up after a few minutes of staring as Harry divested the man of his weapons, "That was freaking _awesome_." Harry looked up to find the blond grinning down at him, still pale but with calm settling over him again. Or what passed for calm in Naruto, anyway.

"Glad you think so," he said, laughing a little. The laugh caught in his throat a moment later, fingers catching on something. He'd found a tiny scroll shoved into a hidden pocket in the man's collar, one stamped with a seal Harry actually recognized. The hourglass emblem of Suna.

"Hey, I recognize that -" Naruto said, but Harry made a clipping motion with his hand to silence him. It was a bit harsher than he usually was, but over the years many people had claimed he had good instincts - and at the sight of the hourglass, those instincts started blaring.

There was a circle of seals around the hourglass that Harry couldn't make sense of but that made him leery of actually opening the scroll. Better to just take it with them to the outpost. Perhaps someone there would know what to do with it.

"Let's move." Naruto opened his mouth, apparently thought better of it, and closed it again. He nodded, and without any kind of prompting, created three clones to carry the man's body. Harry took a moment to nod appreciatively at the initiative, and then they were off at what to Naruto was probably break-neck speed. To Harry it was more of a jog, trained for speed as he was.

Harry estimated that they'd been running for an hour when they reached the Kanzaki outpost – a large circular building that vaguely reminded Harry of an old European watchtower, except made with metal instead of stone – whereupon Naruto collapsed to his knees, breathing so heavily it almost sounded like he was sobbing. Pushing away the spike of guilt at having driven his student so hard, Harry immediately knocked at the door the way their mission scroll had stated. He didn't know if they had any time to lose, after all, and it wouldn't do to be careless with something his instincts were warning him about.

A minute passed in silence, and Harry would have assumed that the password had been wrong and that he should be ducking into a defensive stance, if not for the familiar feeling of eyes resting on himself and his exhausted student.

The way the door looked would have lent itself to an accompanying creaking sound, but when it opened, it did so noiselessly. A dark-haired man with red-framed glasses looked back at Harry, head tilted. "And you would be..?"

"Tokubetsu Jounin Harry. This is my student, Genin Naruto." Naruto mumbled something that didn't sound much like a greeting, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. The shinobi stilled in a way Harry recognized from the disastrous introduction to Unsui, but before the disaster potentially repeated itself, he continued, "We were sent here to deliver a scroll, but a few miles back we were attacked." Gesturing to the unconscious man still in the grasp of Naruto's clones, Harry noted the fact that the blond's clones were still intact, despite Naruto's own weariness. Hm.

"I see. Please come in." The shinobi stepped aside to let them enter, and Harry made sure Naruto walked in ahead of him, under his own watchful gaze. He couldn't read any hostility in the man's carriage, but since shinobi were trained not to project emotion into their body language, that didn't tell him much. "My name is Yamashiro Aoba, also a Tokujo." He showed them to a table in the middle of the room. "We caught your approach, but not the fight preceding it." His head turned slightly toward the their captive. "I'd appreciate a description of what occurred."

Which meant that they had either shinobi or cameras positioned around the outpost. He should have expected that. Watching as Naruto dumped the unconscious body on the table, Harry shook the thought aside and mentally began to prepare his report. Now that they were in presumably safe territory again, he could afford to throw his mind back to the fight and try to draw out details. As he sat there thinking, the original mission scroll traded hands without fanfare, and then both Yamashiro and Naruto sat down.

His recall broken by the sound of shuffling, Harry tried not to laugh at the way the clones stared at each other before seating themselves around the table as well. Yamashiro was turned towards him, waiting, and the Narutos apparently decided to take that as a cue. Harry was a bit surprised that his student wasn't immediately launching into a retelling of the fight, and wondered if it had rattled Naruto more than he'd let on.

There really wasn't much to say about the fight itself, as quick as it had been, and since they had the man here there was no need to describe their assailant. The scroll he'd taken off of the unknown shinobi was all the more interesting, though.

"What's a Suna scroll doing inside Fire Country borders?" Harry asked at the end of his report. He'd placed the scroll in front of the other Tokubetsu Jounin, whose expression reminded Harry of the one Ron had worn the first time he'd tried Hermione's (attempt at a) lemon cake. She'd gotten no better at it, the last time Harry had inquired, but that was probably because neither of them had ever been courageous enough to tell her what they honestly thought of the cake. There was being Gryffindor brave, and then there was being an idiot.

"I don't know." Yamashiro leaned back and turned his head, shouting, "Izumo!" The door to their right rattled, and then a man carrying a sheaf of papers so thick he could rest his chin on it appeared in the doorway.

"What?" Half of his hair covered half of his face, but the other half still managed to look annoyed. "I haven't sorted this out yet, and if you're going to..." he trailed off, blinking. All the Narutos waved at him and Harry gave him a quick nod to hide his smile. He recognized the expression on the boys' faces.

"Hey! I'm Uzumaki Naruto and this is my teacher, Harry, and we were just in a fight! Well, it was mostly Harry-sensei, but it was still awesome, except we found a mysterious scroll from Suna on the guy who attacked us -" said all the Narutos, not quite in concert or using the same words, and this time Harry couldn't keep himself from snorting out loud – though he doubted anyone in the room heard him over the racket the Narutos made. The paper-carrying shinobi looked like someone had whacked him over the head, fumbling with his papers and obviously trying to follow Naruto's dramatic retelling of the fight. The boy used a lot of sound effects, and even to someone who'd actually been there, Naruto's tale was all but completely incomprehensible. Harry was still happy to see such an animated expression on his student's face. Perhaps his worry had been premature.

Finally Naruto wound down from whatever sudden adrenaline high he'd been on, trailing off into expectant silence and quite obviously waiting for a reaction from his audience. Izumo cleared his throat, placing the sheaf of papers on a side table. "So if I understand you correctly, you were in a fight with a sand shinobi wielding a scroll, and your teacher -" the man gestured to Harry, "beat him up with kunai that shoots red lightning?"

Naruto looked affronted, Izumo looked bewildered, and Harry pinched the bridge of his nose and thought of dead kittens. He would not laugh. He would not. Yamashiro apparently didn't have any such compunctions, burying his head in his hands and laughing so hard his shoulders shook.

"Let me," the man said, wiping under his glasses, and then proceeded to repeat what Harry had explained to him. Izumo's expression slowly cleared, and just like that, the tension in the room was back.

"Suna doesn't have leave to operate within our borders without explicit permission. They haven't had leave to do that for years," he muttered, picking up the scroll and squinting at the seal. "It's real, alright."

"How'd you know?" Naruto asked, curious. "How do you know it's real?" he elaborated at Izumo's quick glance.

"I did a stint in Cryptology some time ago." Naruto didn't look like that that answer had actually answered anything, but Harry shushed him with a gesture before he could ask anything more. He was a bit surprised when the boy actually obeyed him, though he tried not to let that show.

Izumo cocked his head, eyes moving from Naruto to Harry. "Pardon me, but who are you?" Introductions were made again, and Harry found out that in addition to Kamizuki Izumo and Yamashiro, two more people were currently stationed here. At least, they'd acknowledge two more: Inuzuka Hana and Ani Yurika. How many more shinobi were actually around, Harry didn't doubt they'd keep a secret.

"Well, this one be going to T&I," Yamashiro said, gesturing absently to the still unconscious shinobi. "I think Hana will have to take both him and the scroll. Can't risk a messenger bird being intercepted if this really is as bad as it seems." Harry wasn't entirely sure just how bad 'this' was, but by the shinobi's tone, he figured it was serious. And also that he really needed to educate himself about Konoha's political standing in the Hidden Countries – perhaps the Hokage could help with that, or at least point him in the direction of someone who could.

"You did well on your first mission, Naruto-san," Kamizuki said with a smile, effectively breaking the re-emerging tension. Yamashiro had gotten up to talk to this Inuzuka Hana person, heaving the body up on one shoulder and leaving through a sideways door without a backwards glance.

"Hehe. I didn't really do much, though." Naruto scratched the back of his neck, looking both embarrassed and pleased. "Harry-sensei was the one who fought..."

"The fight was outside your mission parameters. Your mission was to bring this scroll to this outpost. Which you did." Izumo picked up the scroll Yamashiro hadn't taken with him, which had been all but ignored up until now. Naruto's grin was bright, and Harry wondered again at how easy it was to make the boy happy.

That was yet another thing he was going to have to talk to the Hokage about. Harry thought of Yamashiro's stillness at the mention of Naruto's name, and out of sight of the table's other two occupants, he folded his hands together tightly.

* * *

**A/N:** After a year of pretty much not being sick, I've now been sick twice in a month. That's what I get for thinking 'I'm going to have lots of time to write when I graduate!'

But. New chapter of Teacher, and things are happening!

How did you feel about the action sequence, short though it was? I don't write action very often, so I worry it won't feel 'action-y' enough.


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